Adams, Ansel (20 February 1902–22 April 1984), photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams, a businessman, and Olive Bray. The grandson of a wealthy timber baron, Adams grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake and fire of 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life. A year later the family fortune collapsed in the financial panic of 1907, and Adams’s father spent the rest of his life doggedly but fruitlessly attempting to recoup....
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Adams, Ansel (1902-1984), photographer and environmentalist
William A. Turnage
Article
Altman, Benjamin (1840-1913), merchant and art collector
Dennis Wepman
Altman, Benjamin (12 July 1840–07 October 1913), merchant and art collector, was born in New York, New York, the son of Philip Altman, a dry goods merchant, and Cecilia (maiden name unknown). His father, a Jewish immigrant from Bavaria who had come to the United States in 1835, operated a small dry goods store named Altman & Co. on Third Avenue near Tenth Street. Young Altman worked with his brother Morris in his father’s shop in the afternoons. He left school at the age of twelve to work there full time and later held a variety of sales jobs with other dry goods shops in New York City and in Newark, New Jersey. When his father died in 1854, Altman and his brother took over the store, changing its name to Altman Bros. The business prospered, and by 1865 they moved to Third Avenue and Tenth Street; they moved again to a larger building on Sixth Avenue between Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets in 1870. Morris left the business but remained a partner, and when he died in 1876, Altman became sole owner, later changing the name of the firm to B. Altman & Co....
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Ames, Blanche Ames (18 February 1878–01 March 1969), artist and women's rights activist
Jacqueline Van Voris
Ames, Blanche Ames (18 February 1878–01 March 1969), artist and women's rights activist, artist and women’s rights activist, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Adelbert Ames, a Civil War general and governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Blanche Butler, whose father was a general and governor of Massachusetts. The younger Blanche graduated from Smith College in 1899 with diplomas from both the College and the School of Art....
Article
Bauer, Catherine Krouse (1905-1964), housing advocate and urban-planning educator
Eric Fure-Slocum
Bauer, Catherine Krouse (11 May 1905–22 November 1964), housing advocate and urban-planning educator, was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the daughter of Jacob Louis Bauer, a highway engineer, and Alberta Louise Krouse, a suffragist. Bauer graduated from Vassar College in 1926, having spent her junior year at Cornell University studying architecture. Following graduation she lived in Paris and wrote about contemporary architecture, including the work of the modernist Le Corbusier. In New York from 1927 to 1930, she held a variety of jobs and began a friendship with the architectural and social critic ...
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Becker, Marion Rombauer (1903-1976), cookbook writer, arts administrator, and conservationist
Anne Mendelson
Becker, Marion Rombauer (02 January 1903–28 December 1976), cookbook writer, arts administrator, and conservationist, was born Marion Julia Rombauer in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Edgar Roderick Rombauer, a lawyer, and Irma Louise von Starkloff, a cookbook writer. Her outlook and interests were strongly shaped by a freethinking, reform-minded family. She studied art history and French at Vassar College and spent her junior year at Washington University in St. Louis, receiving a B.A. from Vassar in 1925. Hoping to find a career in modern dance or art education, she began teaching in 1929 in the art department of John Burroughs School, an experimental school in Clayton, Missouri....
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Blass, Bill (22 June 1922–12 June 2002), fashion designer, branding innovator, and philanthropist
Daniel Delis Hill
Blass, Bill (22 June 1922–12 June 2002), fashion designer, branding innovator, and philanthropist, was born William Ralph Blass in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His father, Ralph Aldrich Blass, was a traveling hardware salesman, and his mother, Ethyl Keyser, was a dressmaker who worked from their home. Although his sister, Virginia (Gina), was just two years older than he, they were never close. When Blass was barely five years old, his father committed suicide at home, which Blass later assumed to be from manic-depression, although his mother never discussed the family trauma with her children. His mother did not remarry, and the family struggled during the Depression years on her income from a small annuity, rent from a lakeside cabin, and dressmaking....
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Cram, Ralph Adams (1863-1942), architect and cultural critic
Peter W. Williams
Cram, Ralph Adams (16 December 1863–22 September 1942), architect and cultural critic, was born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, the son of William Augustine Cram, a Unitarian minister, and Sarah Elizabeth Blake. Cram’s early career was strongly affected by his father’s decision to abandon his profession and return to the family farm in New Hampshire to care for his elderly parents. As a result, the young Cram received no formal education after completing high school in 1880; instead, he was formed by a combination of apprenticeship in the office of the Boston, Massachusetts, architectural firm of Rotch and Tilden; extensive travel abroad, financed in part through prizes won in architectural competitions; and voluminous personal reading....
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Darling, Jay Norwood (1876-1962), political cartoonist and conservationist
David L. Lendt
Darling, Jay Norwood (21 October 1876–12 February 1962), political cartoonist and conservationist, known as “Ding,” was born in Norwood, Michigan, the son of the Reverend Marcellus Warner Darling, a public school administrator and Congregational minister, and Clara R. Woolson. Darling grew up from the age of ten in Sioux City, Iowa, a frontier community surrounded by prairie teeming with wildlife. He spent many days and nights hunting, fishing, camping, and horseback riding in the pristine natural bounty that provided what he described as the “pleasantest recollections” of his long and eventful life....
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Darling, Jay Norwood (1876-1962)
In
Jay Norwood Darling. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-98678).
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Flagg, Ernest (1857-1947), architect and urban reformer
Mardges Bacon
Flagg, Ernest (06 February 1857–10 April 1947), architect and urban reformer, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jared Bradley Flagg, a clergyman and artist, and Louisa Hart. After his mother’s death in 1872, Flagg abandoned his formal education and found employment in a series of marginal businesses in New York City. Later he worked as a developer in partnership with his father and brother, an experience that stimulated his interest in architecture and urban reform. Flagg’s cousin ...
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Frick, Helen Clay (3 Sept. 1888–9 Nov. 1984), philanthropist and art historian
Melanie Linn Gutowski
Frick, Helen Clay (3 Sept. 1888–9 Nov. 1984), philanthropist and art historian, was born Helen Childs Frick in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the third child of Henry Clay Frick and Adelaide Howard Childs Frick. Her upbringing was one of extraordinary privilege as her father, the controversial industrialist and art collector, showered his family with every luxury. Little of her father’s public reputation as a ruthless businessman and strike breaker would touch her idyllic childhood at Clayton, the family home. Helen was intensely devoted to her father, seen especially in her decision around age ten to change her given middle name to his own....
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Frick, Helen Clay (September 3, 1888–November 9, 1984)
Corp author Bain News Service
In
Portrait of Helen Frick, between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920 by Bain News Service
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 [LC-B2- 5094-8]
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Fuller, R. Buckminster (1895-1983), inventor, designer, and environmentalist
Olive Hoogenboom
Fuller, R. Buckminster (12 July 1895–01 July 1983), inventor, designer, and environmentalist, often referred to as “Bucky,” was born Richard Buckminster Fuller, Jr., in Milton, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Buckminster Fuller, an importer of leather and tea, who died in 1910, and Caroline Wolcott Andrews. He was the grandnephew of author and literary critic ...
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Fuller, R. Buckminster (1895-1983)
In
R. Buckminster Fuller. Oil on canvas, c. 1981, by Ruth Munson. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
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Harkness, Rebekah West (1915-1982), philanthropist
Lili Cockerille Livingston
Harkness, Rebekah West (17 April 1915–17 June 1982), philanthropist, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Allen Tarwater West, a stockbroker, and Rebekah Semple. The youngest of three children, Rebekah grew up surrounded by the amenities of a prominent St. Louis family. A vivacious, headstrong teenager with a penchant for the arts, she obeyed but did not agree with her father’s request that she resign from a St. Louis Opera production of ...
Article
Hine, Lewis Wickes (1874-1940), photographer
Peter Seixas
Hine, Lewis Wickes (26 September 1874–04 November 1940), photographer, was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the son of Douglas Hine, the operator of a coffee shop, and Sarah Hayes. Hine left Oshkosh after graduating from high school and working at a variety of menial jobs. In 1900 he enrolled at the University of Chicago for one year. In 1901 he began teaching nature study in New York City at the Ethical Culture School, upon the invitation of recently appointed superintendent Frank A. Manny, formerly a professor at the Oshkosh State Normal School. Within three years Hine was in touch with key figures in New York’s reform community, including ...
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Huntington, Anna Vaughn Hyatt (1876-1973), sculptor and philanthropist
David B. Dearinger
Huntington, Anna Vaughn Hyatt (10 March 1876–04 October 1973), sculptor and philanthropist, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Alpheus Hyatt II, a professor of zoology and paleontology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Boston University, and Audella Beebe, an amateur landscape painter. She attended private schools in Cambridge, but at about age seventeen, she began to show an interest in sculpture. This was encouraged by her family, especially by her older sister, Harriet R. Hyatt, who began sculpting in the 1880s. Anna may have accompanied her sister to the Cowles School in Boston to study drawing with ...
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Huntington, Anna Vaughn Hyatt (1876-1973)
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Anna Hyatt Huntington At work on The Torch Bearers. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-112006).
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Johnson, Adelaide (26 Sept. 1859–10 Nov. 1955), sculptor and feminist
Kimberly A. Hamlin
Johnson, Adelaide (26 Sept. 1859–10 Nov. 1955), sculptor and feminist, was born Sarah Adeline Johnson in Plymouth, Illinois to Christopher William Johnson and Margaret Huff Hendrickson. Her father had made a fortune panning for gold in California but lost it in real estate and railroad investments shortly after Adeline was born. The family sold their home at auction and moved to a farm where they raised sheep for wool, which they spun into yarn and cloth. As a young girl Adeline was recognized as a gifted artist with a special talent as a seamstress. From the age of ten she made clothes for her family and for herself, a practice she continued throughout her life. But making homespun clothes on a farm was not the sort of artist Adeline wanted to be. By the time she was sixteen, her parents saved enough money to send her to the St. Louis School of Design. Adeline took top prizes in woodcarving, graduated in ...
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Johnson, Eunice W. (4 April 1916–3 January 2010), fashion show producer and director, publishing company executive, and philanthropist
Margena A. Christian
Johnson, Eunice W. (4 April 1916–3 January 2010), fashion show producer and director, publishing company executive, and philanthropist, was born Eunice Walker, one of five children to Nathaniel Walker and Ethel McAlpine Walker in Selma, Alabama. Her father was a prominent physician in Selma, while her mother was a high school principal, who additionally taught art and education courses at Selma University, a private historically African American Bible college. Her maternal grandfather, Rev. Dr. William H. McAlpine, was the university’s co-founder and its second president, as well as the first president of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. (...
