Guggenheim, Solomon Robert (02 February 1861–03 November 1949), industrialist, art collector, and museum founder, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Meyer Guggenheim, businessman, and Barbara Meyer, Swiss immigrants who had accompanied their parents to Philadelphia in 1847 to escape restrictions on Jews in their native land. By the time of Solomon’s birth, the family had prospered, its good fortune hastened by Meyer’s shrewdness in providing clothing and food supplies for the Union Army during the Civil War. After attending public school in Philadelphia, Solomon was sent to the Concordia Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, to polish his German and study business techniques. Together with his brothers Isaac, Daniel, and Murry, he became a partner in M. Guggenheim’s Sons, the family lace and embroideries manufacturing and importing company (1877; incorp. 1882), and remained in Europe as manager of a branch of the family business in Saxony. The four brothers became the masterminds behind the Guggenheim empire....
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Guggenheim, Solomon Robert (1861-1949), industrialist, art collector, and museum founder
Lillian B. Miller
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Guggenheim, Solomon Robert (1861-1949)
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Juilliard, Augustus D. (1836-1919), industrialist and patron of the arts
Deborah Griffith Davis
Juilliard, Augustus D. (19 April 1836–25 April 1919), industrialist and patron of the arts, was born at sea during the voyage that brought his parents, Jean Nicholas Juilliard, a farmer, and Anna Burlette, to the United States from Burgundy, France. Although he had been a shoemaker in France, Augustus’s father believed that farming offered greater potential for success in America. He and his family settled near Canton, Ohio. Following Juilliard’s schooling he worked in his brother-in-law’s dry goods store in Bucyrus, Ohio. After making a number of buying trips to New York he decided to settle there. He eventually was employed by one of the leading textile commission houses, Hoyt, Spragues & Company. In 1873, when Hoyt, Spragues declared bankruptcy, Juilliard was appointed receiver. Sometime thereafter he formed his own successful textile commission house, A. D. Juilliard and Company, where he served as senior partner....
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Pratt, Daniel (1799-1873), industrialist and community builder
Martin T. Olliff
Pratt, Daniel (20 July 1799–13 May 1873), industrialist and community builder, was born in Temple, New Hampshire, the son of Edward Pratt and Asenath Flint, farmers. Pratt attended school until 1815, when he was apprenticed to carpenter John Putnam. With Putnam’s bankruptcy in 1819, Pratt followed the Yankee immigration to the South, spending two years in Savannah, Georgia, before moving to the state capital at Milledgeville, where he built a number of plantation houses and cotton barges. In 1827 Pratt married Esther Ticknor, with whom he had three children, of which only one lived to adulthood....
