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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Altman, Benjamin (1840-1913), merchant and art collector
Dennis Wepman
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Karolik, Maxim (1893-1963), art collector and philanthropist
Carol Troyen
Karolik, Maxim (1893–20 December 1963), art collector and philanthropist, was born in Bessarabia, Russia (now Rumania), the son of Orthodox Jewish parents. He was trained as an operatic tenor at the Academy in St. Petersburg and performed with the Petrograd Grand Opera Company as well as in opera houses in England and Italy. Karolik came to the United States about 1922 and made his New York debut in 1924 in a recital at Aeolian Hall. He performed to moderate acclaim until the early 1930s, when unspecified health problems caused him to abandon his singing career....
Article
Rosenwald, Lessing Julius (1891-1978), art and book collector and philanthropist
Leonard Dinnerstein
Rosenwald, Lessing Julius (10 February 1891–24 June 1978), art and book collector and philanthropist, was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Julius Rosenwald, a businessman, and Augusta Nusbaum. In 1908 he went to Cornell University but left in 1911 to work as a shipping clerk for Sears, Roebuck, of which his father was president. In 1913 Rosenwald married Edith Goodkind; they had five children. He served as a seaman, second class, in the U.S. Navy during World War I; after the war he returned to Sears, Roebuck. In 1920 his father sent him to Philadelphia to start that city’s first Sears store....
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Sackler, Arthur Mitchell (1913-1987), research psychiatrist, art collector, and philanthropist
Christine Keiner
Sackler, Arthur Mitchell (22 August 1913–26 May 1987), research psychiatrist, art collector, and philanthropist, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Isaac Sackler and Sophie (maiden name unknown). In the 1930s Sackler simultaneously studied medicine at New York University (NYU) and art history at NYU and the Cooper Union Art Institute. To fund his medical studies, he joined the William Douglas MacAdams medical advertising agency. Sackler earned his B.S. from NYU in 1933 and his M.D. from NYU in 1937. In 1935 he married Else Jorgensen; they had two children....
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Stanford, Jane Eliza (1825-1905), philanthropist and collector
Claire Strom
Stanford, Jane Eliza (25 August 1825–28 February 1905), philanthropist and collector, was born in Albany, New York, the daughter of Dyer Lathrop, a storekeeper and founder of the Albany Orphan Asylum, and Jane Anne Shields. Jane had some elementary schooling, followed by a year at the Albany Female Academy (established in 1814) when she was fifteen. In 1850 Jane married ...
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Stokes, Isaac Newton Phelps (1867-1944), architect and historian
F. J. Sypher
Stokes, Isaac Newton Phelps (11 April 1867–18 December 1944), architect and historian, was born in New York City, the son of Anson Phelps Stokes, a banker, and Helen Louisa Phelps. His education was interrupted by episodes of ill health, but he entered Harvard University in 1887 and graduated in 1891. Stokes worked briefly in banking before he began to study at the School of Architecture of Columbia University from 1893 to 1894. He left without taking a degree and went to Paris to study housing design at the École des Beaux Arts. Improved tenement housing was to be a lifelong interest of his. In 1895 he married Edith Minturn. They had an adopted daughter....
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Wolfe, Catharine Lorillard (1828-1887), philanthropist and art collector
Saul E. Zalesch
Wolfe, Catharine Lorillard (08 March 1828–04 April 1887), philanthropist and art collector, was born in New York City, the daughter of John David Wolfe, a merchant and real-estate developer, and Dorothea Ann Lorillard. Wolfe experienced the stereotypical childhood of the very rich, including private tutors, fashionable parties, and family tours in Europe. Her interests appear to have included art, social life, fashion, foreign travel, and daily horseback riding in Central Park or near “Vinland,” her Newport estate. At the death of her mother in 1866 she inherited part of the Lorillard tobacco fortune and began to collaborate with her father in his philanthropic endeavors. She may also have begun speculating in real estate. After her father died in 1872 Wolfe possessed a fortune estimated at $12 million. It is difficult to determine how she invested or managed her money; as a refined woman, she shunned publicity, and contemporary observers only recorded her activities that were deemed appropriate for women. As seen by contemporaries, her main interests were the Episcopal church, social life, travel, philanthropy, and art collecting. One obituary declared, “Miss Wolfe was a most quiet and unassuming person and had no eccentricities of habit or character” ( ...
