Rebecca Pollard

Rebecca Pollard Van Lennep Guggenheim Logan, a philanthropist and patron of the arts who was for a generation one of the best-known social hostesses in Washington, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 90. The cause was heart failure, said Leonard L. Silverstein, her lawyer.

For 21 years she was married to Col. M. Robert Guggenheim, an heir to the copper fortune, who died in 1959. Their 55-room residence, Firenze House, is one of Washtington's great estates, set on 22 acres in the northwestern section of the city. From the 1940's to the 1970's Firenze House was the setting for social functions attended by Presidents, Government officilas, diplomats and business executives. It was also used for charity fund-raising events.

Mrs. Logan was active in committees aiding the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Symphony and the Opera Society of Washington. She studied art in New York and graduated from the school at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. While there, she met and in 1926 married a Harvard student, Dr. William B. Van Lennep Jr. They divorced in 1937.

The next year she married Colonel Guggeheim, who was the United States Ambassador to Portugal in 1953 and 1954, aboard his 175-foot yacht. After Colonel Guggeheim died, she married John A. Logan in 1962. Mr. Logan, a management consultant in Washington, died in 1986. She is survived by a son, Richard Van Lennep of Washington; a nephew, Randolph M. Pollard of Las Vegas, Nev., and a niece, Beverly Page of Bow, N.H.

-- New York Times, Mar 16, 1994