January 16, 1997, version
TO CATHECT OR NOT TO CATHECT
by
John K. Notz, Jr.
Delivered to
The Chicago Literary Club
March 11, 1996
Copyright John Kranz Notz, Jr. (1996)
Two years ago, after having heard that the noncredit Continuing Education Programs of The University of Chicago given in the old Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue were remarkably good, I looked through the course announcement brochure. One course description caught my eye: "Death and Other Passages". I signed up. At the opening of the first class, all attending were expected to provide a reason why he or she had signed up for this course. I provided what first came to my head - reassessment of relationships in my family, as a result of the deaths of my parents. The instructor moved into her concept of her course, being the grieving process that should follow any significant lifetime loss. She asked us if any of us knew the meaning of "CATHECT". None of us did. We proceeded to explore it:
According to standard dictionaries, "CATHECT" is a psychoanalytical term, meaning:
"To invest emotion or feeling in an idea, object or another person", or
"The investment of emotional significance in an activity, object or idea"; or
"The charge of psychic energy so invested;" or
"A taking possession of or the concentration of desire on some object."
This exploration into a single word brought me to reflect on the, to me, most important "leavings" of my mother - three short well-written memoirs of which I was not aware until after my father had died. I remembered this extract from one of those memoirs, as she wrote of her grandfather and his second home, known in the family as "Forest Glen" at the "West End" of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and the happiness that it reflected. This memoir was written in 1950-1952, describing a Summer visit in 1915-1919:
"My fondest childhood memories are the weeks I spent at Lake Geneva. . . . In [about, 1900], Grandfather bought a summer house on Lake Geneva. The house overlooked the lake and was a fascinating Victorian structure with a circular tower, four stories high. . . . The entrance was an imposing one - stone posts and wrought-iron gates with "Forest Glen", the name of the estate, in iron letters attached. The house was set back from an oiled country road, and on the other side of the road was the "farm" - the farmer's house, the barn, the chicken house and vegetable garden. Above the vegetable garden and to the side was a vineyard. The property went back and back - there were 350 acres. The terrain formed a wooded valley, through which a lovely brook hurried to join the lake."The brook began in the hills far back in the property, and, fed by springs, increased in size and speed because of the downhill slant of the property. My grandfather designed ponds and falls at intervals and stocked the brook with trout. The area was landscaped with an effort to look as natural as possible, with willows and spruce. The sound of the little falls and the rippling of the clear cold water was charming. Here and there a bridge crossed, and one could follow paths and walks for a good morning's stroll. As the stream approached the lake, it widened to approximately three feet and was kept within bounds by artificial banks. This made the water all the more noisy, and my impressions contain this constant rushing sound of water.
"The ground on which the main house stood sloped down toward the brook on one side and to Lake Geneva on the other. There was a good deal of shade produced by huge elm trees. The lawns did not grow too well because of this condition. There were flower beds along the walk leading to the house and borders here and there in the open sunlight. . . ."
". . . Here it was that my grandfather's talents and horticultural hobby reached their most satisfactory expression. . . ."
Rereading that memoir caused me to wish to cathect to my mother's grandfather (Edward G. Uihlein - a "U-line" of Chicago, not an "E-line" of Milwaukee). I did so, by rereading a much older memoir that her grandfather had written, starting in 1915, the same period as my mother's Summer visits to his "Forest Glen", of which memoir I had learned about ten years earlier, when a local Lake Geneva area woman (Julie Bak) was writing a series of newspaper articles on the historical past of the subdivision in which she lived. She had called my mother, who was the eldest of her generation, and invited herself to my mother's home for an interview; because I had an interest in the Lake Geneva area, I was included. My mother had brought out a memoir of her grandfather of which I had not, previously, been aware. I found that it was written in a mix of German and English, in a European handwriting that was exceedingly difficult for me to read. I arranged for a translation and a transcription. The following is an extract from that memoir:
"After my experience as [Chicago West] Park Commissioner, I concluded to have my own park and acquired the nice home and grounds of George A. Weiss [a Chicago brewer] located on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva, consisting of some 22 acres with 500 feet [of] lakefront. In due time, considerable land adjoining me was offered for sale, and I accumulated, all told, about 134 acres, a good part of which is in farm and splendid woodland. The balance I transformed into a park, free admission to which was at all times granted to and enjoyed by the public. Only a small part - about 3-1/2 acres - [was] improved on, and near the lakefront [was] also where the house was located. The rest of the land is on the west side of a public road running through, and this is the part I selected for park purposes. It required a great deal of work . . . The grotto pond with a rookery and spring on top of [the] same is unique of its kind. About 35 men were busy over five months to complete everything. . . ."I have never sanctioned the attitude of owners of fine places to deny visitors admission, and, since I own the place, visitors have been welcome at all times. It is true that some make improper use of that privilege, but, in general, I have no particular reason to complain. The objectionable features are boys running wild, and girls are overanxious to take photos, taking positions in the flower beds and [trampling] down the flowers. Very few pick flowers and walk over the lawns, and so, in all, I did not, to date, find it necessary to change my rules. . . .
". . . [Good] work under an able Superintendent was done, . . . "
"Able Superintendent" - I had assumed that that man was a head gardener - a mere employee. How wrong I was! I have, since, realized that that "Able Superintendent" was Jens Jensen, the famous Prairie School landscape architect and one of the founders of The Cliff Dwellers.
This is an extract from the 1936 Marquis' "Who's Who in Chicago and Vicinity" of the entry on Jensen:
JENSEN, Jens, landscape architect; born in Denmark . . . [in] 1860; . . . educated at the Agricultural College, Jutland, Denmark; further studies in agriculture and horticulture at Copenhagen and later studied at Berlin and Hanover, Germany; . . . came to the U.S. in 1884; superintendent of Union and other small city parks of West Park System, Chicago, 1890-1894; superintendent of Humboldt Park, 1894-1900; landscape architect and general superintendent of West Park System, 1906-1909; consulting landscape architect of the same, 1909-1920. . . .
With his native area (Jutland) being so close to Germany and his military service and education in Berlin, Jensen's German must have been fluent.
For Christmas, a year or two ago, my wife gave me a copy of a 1960's biography of Jensen. Reading that biography, this paragraph caught my attention:
". . . The list of [Jensen's] works between 1900 and 1906 is slender; . . . [Jensen] was dependent upon a few generous clients such as Herman Paepcke and Harry Rubens of Glencoe (1901-1903) and [J.] B. Grommes of Lake Geneva (1903) . . . These early clients deserve a ranking alongside the creative businessmen who commissioned buildings from Sullivan, Jenney and Root in the 1880's and the remarkable suburbanites who saw the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright in the early years of this century. The very idea of landscape architecture was new in Chicago at this time, . . . It is probable that these first commissions came to [Jensen] as a result of his early work in the West Parks; in any event, Paepcke, Rubens and Grommes were taking a chance on someone relatively unknown."
The writer of that biography was Leonard Eaton, at the time of his writing a Professor of Architecture in the College of Arts and Architecture at The University of Michigan.
I remembered having bought a copy of a later (1992) biography of Jensen, by another Professor at The University of Michigan, Robert Grese, and that there was a long list of Jensen's projects in its Appendices. I pulled out Grese's book and tabulated Jensen's private projects for 1900-1920, the year that he left Chicago's West Park System for the second time. Those that I believe are relevant to my analysis of Uihlein's relationships with Jensen are on the schedule in an Appendix, hereto, to which reference should be made, as I proceed.
Then, I recalled a paragraph in an article by Malcolm Collier that I had seen in an old issue of the "Quarterly" magazine of The Morton Arboretum containing:
"The years from 1900 to 1905 were as crucial for Jensen's professional development as they were for his family's finances, but information about these years is scarce. The landscaping job for Mr. Uihlein in 1901 was not extensive. In 1902, architect Jensen designed a house for lumberman Hermann Paepcke, and Jensen landscaped [Paepcke's] twenty acres of Glencoe, Illinois, lakefront. The architect [Jebsen] and landscaper [Jensen] had become acquainted, no doubt, because of Jensen's buildings in Humboldt Park. . . ."
I thought to myself, is it possible that the first private project that Jensen executed was for my great grandfather?
It has been suggested to me that Jensen got his clients through the architects selected by the property owners (or their wives). While likely to be true in some cases (the Prairie School architects such as Maher, Perkins and Wright), the selection of the landscape architect seems, too often, to follow too long after the construction of the private residence, especially where (as with respect to the Weiss/Uihlein property), the architectural style of the private residence was no longer as fashionable as it had been when the structure was conceived.
Jensen's first biographer, Eaton, has observed to me that it was Julius Rosenwald's taking up of Jensen that brought Jensen his commissions within Chicago's Jewish community. The following, from Eaton's examination of the clients of Frank Lloyd Wright and Howard Van Doren Shaw in "Two Chicago Architects and Their Clients" (1969) is consistent with Eaton's thesis:
". . . While Shaw was not as well known in the Chicago Jewish community as his slightly older contemporary, Jens Jensen, he had an excellent reputation; among his commissions were houses for:
Benjamin E. Bensinger [1908]
Julius Rosenwald [1911-1929 in Highland Park, IL]
Robert Schaffner [Harry Hart, 1911, in Oconomowoc, WI ?]
Morris Rosenwald [1912-1913 in Chicago]
Louis B. Kuppenheimer [1913-1916 in Lake Forest]
A. G. Becker [1926 in Highland Park, IL]
Lake Shore Country Club [1926] in Glencoe. (at p. 205)
All of these projects followed, by some years, the 1900-1905 period on which I have focused.
My own thesis is that it was Jensen's ability to deal with his clients in German that brought him so many German-American clients - whether they were Lutherans from the North of Germany, Roman Catholics from the South of Germany or German-speaking Jews from wherever. One can recognize several of the earliest names on Jensen's client list, after that of Uihlein, as being among the most prominent German-Americans and Austrian-Americans of Chicago. I asked myself, "Who introduced who to whom?"
Earlier, I had found my way to a collection of essays edited by Melvin A. Holli, a Professor of History at The University of Illinois at Chicago, titled "ETHNIC - A Multicultural Portrait - Chicago" (1977/1995). Therein, from one by Irving Cutler titled, "The Jews of Chicago", is the following:
"The German Jews . . . had been forced by common political views [with non-Jewish Germans] to leave Germany after the collapse of the Revolutions of 1848. . . ."
Holli's own excellent essay in the same collection, titled "German American Ethnic and Cultural Identity from 1890 Onward", contains:
"The Germans who came to Chicago after the 1850's . . . were fleeing overpopulation, the extension of economic freedom into the German States, and the new factory methods of production that undermined the wages, the prosperity, and the traditional ways that the guilds had protected. . . .""They arrived in the New World and Chicago at the right time. American cities were just beginning to industrialize and modernize and could use the crafts and skills that the Germans brought. They fit well into the new industrializing economy. . . . Germans could grow up with Chicago and benefit in the process."
***
". . . By 1900, German-American visibility in radical circles was a fading phenomenon and in a state of precipitous decline. . . ."
***
"From The Great Fire of 1871 to The Great War of 1914, Chicago's Germans waxed in numbers, confidence, economic success, and cultural acceptance. . . . They . . . did well . . . as entrepreneurs and businessmen."
Before Eaton's observation on Julius Rosenwald's influence on Jensen, I had been tracking the relationships of Jensen's earliest private clients to Uihlein. My first contact had been to Paul Guenzel, a Paepcke descendant and a childhood friend of my mother. I had called him, asking, "What does he know of how his grandfather found Jensen?" While Paul has been a long-time supporter of Jensen's Door County efforts (Jensen's own "Clearing" and The Ridges Sanctuary), he had no personal knowledge or family lore of Jensen; however, he had some old photographs of Hermann Paepcke's Glencoe property, "Indianola"; some showed mature landscaping. I arranged for more copies and sent them to Eaton and to those responsible for the two most substantial Jensen Collections - The Morton Arboretum and the Library of the College of Arts and Sciences of The University of Michigan. Eaton confirmed to me that they reflected Jensen's design style.
Some weeks later, I learned that Stephen F. Christy, Jr., the Executive Director of Lake Forest's Open Lands, had written his Master's Thesis at The University of Wisconsin on some of Jensen's work, titled, "The Growth of an Artist: Jens Jensen and Landscape Architecture". I called Christy; he, generously, loaned me his personal copy of his thesis. I found in it a summary of an interview by him of Paul Guenzel's mother in which she related her childhood contacts with Jensen. I was able to return Paul Guenzel's courtesy to me, by sending him a copy of that portion of Christy's thesis.
Not only did I find nothing in Christy's thesis that was inconsistent with my developing theory, I found:
". . . More probable is that [Paepcke}simply heard of the architects for his "Indianola" - Jebsen and Jensen] though his friends, perhaps Edward Uihlein, who was one of the West Park Commissioners in the late 1890's. . . . [with a citation to a footnote (6), which stated:]"Another of Jensen's early jobs, perhaps his second, was that of Edward Uihlein's summer home on Lake Geneva. Uihlein undoubtedly knew of Jensen from his [Jensen's] Humboldt Park work. He himself [Uihlein] was a great lover of plants, and owned one of the largest private conservatories in Chicago at this time. . . ."
Why did Christy think of Jensen's work for Uihlein as Jensen's second, rather than his first, private project? I have concluded that Christy had not quite gotten his dates right and that Uihlein's was Jensen's first private commission and that Paepcke was Jensen's second. Since, I have talked to Christy, and he has told me that my theory is at least as probable as his own.
In Christy's thesis, I, also, found a citation to a letter from Ann Wolfmeyer of Lake Geneva, WI, to Christy that Christy had deposited in the Jensen Collection at The Morton Arboretum. Ann's name is well-known in the Lake Geneva area, as the co-author, with Maggie Gage, of "Lake Geneva - Newport of the West - 1870-1920" [herein: "Newport of the West"]. I wrote Carol Doty at The Morton Arboretum (known to me from the credits to her in the work product of Eaton and Christy to be likely to be helpful), and I made a date to visit the Arboretum, to read the letter. It contained:
"Edward G. UIHLEIN purchased property from George A. Weiss, the original owner, in the autumn of 1899. The home had been designed by architect Henry Lord Gay of Chicago and built during the winter of 1892-1893. Uihlein did little to change the home itself, concentrating instead on the grounds, where heavy storms and resulting erosion of the stream which bisected the property had left scars during Weiss' tenure. There are no dates available on the actual work by Jensen other than a reference in a brief description of the estate written in 1960, . . . . The sole photograph that I have seen [is] of the stream area, . . ."
A copy of that lovely photograph is reproduced in "Newport of the West", and the original can be seen in the photography collection of the Lake Geneva Public Library.
Christy, in his thesis (at p. 27), quotes Jensen saying, in later years:
"Private Estate work is selfish - they build a wall around it and point their noses at their fellow countrymen. I ought to know."
Quite recently, I was "resifting" through Jensen's thoughtful essay titled, "Siftings" (1939,1956,1990), and I came across this:
"Clients are of all sorts. Those with a real understanding of landscaping are the very, very few. Some know too much, or have an idea they do, and they are better left alone. Then, there are those who want a garden because their neighbor has one, and I am afraid these are in the majority. But there are the few who have a real love of growing things. I have been fortunate in having some of the latter, . . ."
Jensen was referring to A. G. Becker. From what I have read in Edward Uihlein's memoir, I am convinced that Uihlein was, like Becker, not as "selfish" as Jensen considered his own later clients to have been. Uihlein, after all, had opened his Forest Glen to the public, as if it were a public park.
***
Before I begin my analysis of the relationships among the 1900-1905 private clients of Jensen, here are additional extracts from Uihlein's memoir, providing more of a sense of the man:
More with respect to Uihlein's interest in horticulture:
"In 1877, I acquired several lots for the erection of our own home [he had married in 1875] at what was then known as 34 Ewing Place, between Robey Street and Hoyne Avenue, now 2041 Pierce Avenue [near Wicker Park], Chicago. . . . [Emil] Frommann was the architect. Later on [1888], I [decided] to erect a conservatory for the cultivation of rare plants, . . . - in fact, as many tropical plants as the greenhouses could accommodate, to which I added a little collection of orchids. . . . [T]he orchid collection was much enlarged, and, today, some 5,000 of the rarest orchids from all parts of the world are to be found in the various parts of my conservatories. . . ."
Not mentioned in Uihlein's own "Who's Who" entry or in his memoir are his substantial contributions of funds and plants to The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893; the minutes of the earliest meetings of The Chicago Horticultural Society are replete with references thereto.
With respect to Uihlein's interest in music:
"About in the month of May, 1867, [a] Mr. Ehrhorn proposed to start a male chorus, called the Teutonia Maennerchor [Men's Chorus] Club, with some 18 members. . . . The Society made good progress and, in the course of time, enrolled about 120 members. . . . I had the honor of being elected as the first President of our Society, and I was reelected time and time again. . . . In 1917, we celebrated our 50th Anniversary with a large concert. . . . Some 22 singing societies honored us. . . . The whole festival ended up with a visit by all 122 members at our place at Lake Geneva. . . ."
With respect to Uihlein's involvement in brewing industry trade associations:
". . . . [The Schlitz Company] was always a member of the Chicago and Milwaukee Brewers' Association, and, as I have, at all times, taken an active interest in the same, I was honored with the Secretaryship for some 14 years, without any interruption. As various times, I was elected a Trustee, which brought me the title of watchdog of the Treasury. Finally, I was elected for two terms as President of the Association. Considering that I was a sharp competitor of my Chicago colleagues, I looked upon this action as quite an honor for myself and for our firm, . . ."
With respect to Uihlein's interest in politics:
Uihlein had been a West Park Commissioner from 1894 to 1896 - appointed by Altgeld but removed by Tanner. Uihlein's memoir contains a bitter passage about the absence of gratitude for his (Uihlein's) significant efforts on behalf of Chicago's West Park System. This extract from the 1896-1897 minutes of The Chicago Horticultural Society reflects a civic effort to cause the patronage of the Illinois Governors' power to appoint Commissioners of the Chicago park systems to cease:
"WHEREAS: Mr. Edward G. Uihlein, a public-spirited man, a business man of marked ability and eminently successful, always a friend and generous patron of horticulture, has by his course in life won the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens; and
"WHEREAS: By his work as a member of the Board of the West Chicago Park Commissioners he has abundantly demonstrated the advisability of having such a man in the directing and management of our Park and Boulevard Systems;
"THEREFORE, be it RESOLVED: that this Horticultural Society of Chicago make known its high appreciation and endorsement of Mr. Uihlein's services as Park Commissioner in this City, and unanimously recommends his continuance in the position where he has shown such eminent efficiency."
That effort failed, utterly, at that time; ultimately, however, the consolidation of the three independent park systems operating within Chicago (North, West and South) into our present elected Park Board changed the pattern of patronage into what we, now, have..
Of the years of Uihlein's involvement in The Chicago Horticultural Society, only the minutes from its inception (1890) through those at which Uihlein was elected its president (October, 1904) have survived. In the January, 1896, minutes of The Chicago Horticultural Society, this appeared:
"Mr. James Jensen then had a very interesting and instructive paper on 'Insects Injurious to Shade and Ornamental Trees.' . . . A vote of thanks was tendered to Mr. Jensen for his enjoyable and instructive paper."
It is well-known that, for many years, Jensen Anglicized his given name from "Jens" to "James"; thus, one can be confident that it is the same man. At the same meeting, Jensen, I surmise on the nomination of Uihlein, had been elected to be a full member of the Society, joining the likes of Armour, Glessner, Hutchinson, McNally and Selfridge - a most unusual position for a mere park district employee.
***
Given that Uihlein appears to have been Jensen's first private client, did Jensen's work for Uihlein bring any of Jensen's 1900-1905 private clients? That, later, Edward Uihlein was able to persuade his own family to use Jensen's skills is evidenced by the fact that Jensen was retained by Uihlein's eldest daughter (my grandmother - Clara Uihlein Trostel) in 1909-1910 for the landscaping of her then quite new, quite large home on North Lake Drive in Milwaukee (demolished in 1936 after a fire) and by his only son (my mother's uncle, Edgar J. Uihlein) for the landscaping of his then quite new estate in Lake Bluff, IL, just to the South of The Shoreacres Club and, still, owned by the son of Edgar Uihlein, one of my mother's cousins, Edgar J. Uihlein, Jr. But, as both of these projects were well after the 1900-1905 period on which my study was focused, neither provided the link that I sought.
I have recognized that, other than two Prairie School architects early in their careers (George Washington Maher and Dwight Heald Perkins) virtually all of the 1900-1905 clients of Jensen were immigrants from Germany. I had fixed the 1900-1905 parameters, because those were the years that immediately followed the termination of Jensen's employment in 1900 by the West Side Park System and his return to it in August, 1905, after the winds of politics had brought another change to the administration of the West Park System. Using, on one hand, my tabulation of Jensen's private clients from one of Grese's biography's Appendices, supplemented by a handful of other sources of information on Jensen and, on the other, the 1911 edition of Marquis' "The Book of Chicagoans" (the predecessor of the Chicago "Who's Who's"), I looked up all the owners of Jensen's 1900-1905 private projects.
What follows is my analysis of the relationships among those early clients with each other, wherein recommendations of Jensen by Uihlein (or by others) could, readily, have been effected:
ST. ANNE'S HOSPITAL - (Grese's Appendix lists this project as "St. Ann's Hospital".) Per Julie Bak, who, in the 1970's wrote articles for "The Walworth Times" consisting of a history of Edward Uihlein's "Forest Glen", collected into a small volume later published by her titled "The Embers", Edward Uihlein had, before his generosity to German - later Grant - Hospital in Chicago, been exceeding generous to St. Anne's Hospital in the at Division and Lamon Streets in the Austin/Oak Park area - probably related to care given to his in-laws, the Manns Family, or to his wife, during the births of their children (1876-1892). It seems likely that Uihlein was a Director of that hospital in a position to influence a decision of its management to do significant landscaping and to obtain the assignment for the design thereof to Jensen. Using a 1990 map of Chicago, I have found the site of At. Anne's Hospital; it was demolished in about 1995. There is no remnant of it or of Jensen's design work other than a 1903 aerial (balloon) photograph in the lobby area of the Community Center that has been built on the site of the original hospital building. The paths to the South and East of the hospital building show clearly in white - probably limestone gravel - curling in a complex pretzel-like pattern; there was only minimal planting. The plaques seen by Julie Bak in the 1970's have been removed and may, still be in the possession of the Sisters of the Evangelical and Reformed Lutheran denomination that had operated this hospital (and two others of the same vintage within Chicago). I speculate that these hospitals, at least St. Anne's, were a Turn of the Century "outreach" effort of Uihlein's St. Peter's Evangelical and Reformed Lutheran Church on Fullerton Parkway in Chicago.
PAEPCKE - Paepcke appears to have had no personal interest in horticulture; however, Paepcke and Uihlein had served, together, on the committee that had arranged the celebration involving Chicago's large German community for the installation of the large bronze statue of Alexander von Humboldt in Chicago's West Park System's Humboldt Park. As described earlier in this paper, Paepcke's architect was Jebsen of Jebsen & Frommann; Frommann had been an architect for substantial public structures in Humboldt Park and, in 1877, also, the architect of Uihlein's Wicker Park (Chicago) home.
MOSSER - This project is not on Grese's list of Jensen's private clients; I saw a reference to it in the article by Malcolm Collier (in the Winter, 1977, "Quarterly" of The Morton Arboretum). It seemed implausible to me that a lawyer only two years out of law school could hire a landscape architect and, five years later, be in the Chicago "Who's Who". The answer lies, probably, in the fact that, by 1907, Mosser had become a name partner of Harry Rubens' law firm (Rubens' estate being a Jensen project of the following year); at some point, he married Rubens' daughter. Jensen may have made a "Two for the price of one" commitment to the two law partners. The Mosser property is extant at 750 West Hutchinson Street, Chicago, in the midst of these Maher-designed residences:
John C. Scales 840 West Hutchinson (1894)
Edwin J. Mosser 750 West Hutchinson (1902)
William H. Lake 826 West Hutchinson (1904)
Grace Brackebush 826 West Hutchinson (1909)
Claude Seymour 817 West Hutchinson (1913)
WACKER - The Wacker Family controlled significant properties in the brewing industry, causing it to be a certainty that Wacker was well-acquainted with Uihlein; in addition, Wacker was a Governing Member of The Art Institute of Chicago; when Jensen was elected to that status is, still, for me to find. Another, even clearer, connection between Wacker and Uihlein and Jensen was the 1897 endorsement by The Chicago Horticultural Society of Wacker as a Commissioner of the North (Lincoln) Park System, just as the Society had endorsed Uihlein for the West Park System. Still another connection of Wacker to Uihlein was Wacker's 1902 succession to Uihlein as a director of The Lake Geneva Good Roads Association.
MAHER - Maher was, in those days, a true Prairie School architect. I have not, yet, traced how Maher and Jensen met. It seems likely that Maher was happy enough with Jensen's landscape design work for Maher's own Kenilworth home that Maher would have approved, if not suggested, that, Rubens retain Jensen for the landscape design of Rubens' own Glencoe estate.
LOGAN - While The Cliff Dwellers had not, yet, been organized when Jensen did work for Logan (1903), it appears that Logan, as well as Jensen, was, in 1907, one of its founding members. In any event, Uihlein's generous contributions towards the horticultural displays at The World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 were consistent with the archeological contributions to it by Logan. Thus, it seems likely that Logan and Uihlein would have met in the course thereof. An introduction by Uihlein of Jensen to Logan during that period seems a highly likely event. (Logan was, later, a Trustee of Beloit College and extremely generous to it, resulting in the naming for him, some years ago, of the just renovated Logan Museum on its campus in Beloit, WI.
STENSLAND - Stensland was a Norwegian much involved in real estate development in what is, now, the Northwest Side of Chicago. Irving Park, the site for which Jensen provided a 1903 design is at the corner of Irving Park Boulevard and Kostner Avenue (4400 West), a neighborhood that, still, has, some large Victorian residences; I surmise that Irving Park was a residential neighborhood real estate development much like Wicker Park, where Uihlein had his Chicago home. Stensland's relationship to Uihlein was their being members of the World's Columbian Exposition Board.
GROMMES - Just as Uihlein was in the wholesale beer business, Grommes was in the wholesale liquor business. In developing a Centennial (1995) history of the Lake Geneva Country Club, which is immediately adjacent to Grommes' "All View", I found, to my astonishment, that Uihlein, in 1912, was a member. However, because of his involvement in 1905-1908 in an unsuccessful effort to develop a small golf course on property behind his "Forest Glen", I doubt that Uihlein was a member until 1908, well after the 1905 construction of Grommes' "All View" and his use of Jensen, I do not believe that a common membership in that club was their connection. Far more likely is the fact that Richard Schmidt, a part of the Seipp Family of Lake Geneva's "Black Point", was the architect for Grommes' "All View". (If this paper should convert any of you into a student of Jensen's work, the vista from the front door of the portion of the original residence (now owned by Mrs. Gordon - Francine - Bartels) that, still, survives at "All View" is a classic Jensen meadow view, a miniature of others that he designed for other sites - most notably Henry Ford's "Fair Lane" in Dearborn, MI, a private park which has become available to the public. According to "Newport of the West",
"The sugar maple 'forest' [at "All View"] planted under the direction of landscape architect Jens Jensen is particularly prominent each Autumn."
REHM - A likely additional connection of Uihlein to Grommes could have been Frank Rehm, who was, in 1905, a business protégé of Grommes and about to marry Grommes' eldest daughter, Clara. Rehm, like Uihlein, was a participant in the then well-known German singing societies.
RUBENS - Uihlein came to the United States, to St. Louis, in 1864; he moved to Chicago in 1867; Rubens came to the United States, to St. Louis, in 1867; he moved to Chicago in 1873. While the two men could have met in St. Louis in 1867, it is more likely that, because Rubens had, by 1902, become a remarkably effective and influential politician, representing the Liquor Dealers' State and National Associations and the United Breweries Co, Rubens and Uihlein must have been well-acquainted in connection with Uihlein's trade association activities.
PERKINS - Perkins is, of course, another quite well-known Prairie School architect. I know of no connection of Uihlein to Perkins, except if, in spite of the political termination of his service as a West Park System Commissioner, Uihlein's interest in patronage-free operation of Chicago parks continued, he and Perkins were certain to have met, as Perkins was a member of Chicago's Special Park Commission from 1899 on. It seems more likely that, except as I relate hereinafter with respect to Jensen's 1905 return to Chicago's West Park System, Uihlein, in 1900, withdrew from West Park System activities, in favor of the development, with Jensen, of his "Forest Glen". With respect to Rubens, Perkins, as landscape architect for The Chicago Board of Education, would have been well-acquainted with Rubens, as Rubens was that Board's legal counsel. As was the case with Jensen's commission from Maher, it seems likely that this private commission from Perkins to Jensen was the result of a personal and professional friendship of the two men.
ORB - Orb, too, was born in Germany. Starting at the bottom of the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company in 1874, he became its president after 1884 after the death of Conrad Seipp By 1905, however, he had disposed of all of his commercial interests. The Seipp and Uihlein Families were quite close, with two grand sons of Conrad Seipp [Edwin and William - uncles of Literary Club member Bill Petersen] marrying two daughters of Edward Uihlein [Ella and Melita - aunts of my mother]. While the Uihlein and Seipp intermarriages followed 1900-1905, the two families' interests in those parts of Chicago's brewing industry that continued after The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had to have brought them together. The Seipp Family Summer home on Lake Geneva is readily visible from the site of Edward Uihlein's "Forest Glen" directly across Lake Geneva's "West End". Both large Victorian homes (1888, in the case of that of Seipp, and 1892, in the case of that of Uihlein) were rather similar; it is noteworthy that neither owner used the same architect or landscape architect. In 1911, however, another Seipp son-in-law [Thies J. Lefens] used Jensen, for his own Lake Geneva home, a short way to the East of Seipp's Black Point. Another Seipp son-in-law [Albert F. Madlener] bought the Kochs/Fleming property, immediately on the other side of "Black Point" in 1920; I can find no trace thereon of the distinctive rock work that is a Jensen trade mark or a view such as Jensen would require for a site of one of his typical council rings.
CHALMERS - As Chalmers (who was the Chalmers of Allis-Chalmers) was a Director of The World's Columbian Exposition, that would have been a likely contact with Uihlein. As Chalmers was a member of The Chicago Board of Education, that would have been a certain contact for Chalmers with Perkins and, indirectly, a possible contact with Jensen. However, Chalmers' Lake Geneva home was no more than a few hundred yards up the shore of Lake Geneva from Uihlein's "Forest Glen". Chalmers could, hardly, not have known what Jensen was doing for Uihlein at Uihlein's "Forest Glen".
JOHN HATELY - This Hately brother, who was exactly Uihlein's age, had retired from active business in 1895. He had built his Lake Geneva home ("Galewood") in 1893. He had been involved with Wacker in Lake Geneva area ventures intended to improve the "round-the-lake" road, including The Lake Geneva Good Roads Association. Of exact relevance, however, is the fact that he and his brother, Walter, were elected members of The Chicago Horticultural Society in January, 1896, on the same date as Jensen's election - also, seemingly, as a result of Uihlein's efforts. While Walter Hately had a "fancy stock farm" on Troy Lake, a bit to the North of Lake Geneva, I know of no work by Jensen on it.
***
I could go through the rest of the list, through the all the other early Jensen private clients, but there are two of the balance that I wish to highlight:
LACKNER - Francis Lackner and Rubens, both, had held prominent positions on General Schurz' staff during The Civil War; thus, they must have been well-acquainted. Francis Lackner had built a lovely, still extant, home on Lake Geneva, named "Waldeck" and sold it in 1900. Lackner had been a witness to an 1892 agreement among Weiss, the owner of the property at Lake Geneva bought by Uihlein and one John Johnston, Jr., said to be a brother-in-law of Henry Lord Gay, the designer of the Weiss home purchased in 1899 by Uihlein,; that agreement stated that the permitted development of the many acres of "West End" real estate covered by it - not only Uihlein's property, but much more acreage - could be only "first class residences". (That agreement has been litigated at least four times, as one developer after another proposed subdivisions. Within the past year, a 1910 clone of that 1892 agreement is in the courts.) Why Lackner vacated his rather new Lake Geneva home, I don't know. Per the excellent walking tour pamphlet on George Washington Maher published by The Kenilworth Historical Society, the Lackner Family used Maher in 1905 to design their new Kenilworth home. While I would like to credit Uihlein with introducing Jensen to Lackner, it seems far more likely that Maher, having just finished, with Jensen on the landscape design, a successful project for Rubens, Maher brought Jensen to Lackner.
ECKHART - By 1895, Bernard Eckhart had a lake front parcel on Geneva Lake known as "Hazeldore", between Edward Ayars' "The Oaks" and Marengo Park, within direct view from Uihlein's "Forest Glen"; he had to have known Uihlein well enough in Chicago's German community that he could have influenced Uihlein to purchase his "Forest Glen" in 1899. As Eckhart was a politically active German immigrant (an 1887-1889 member of the Illinois legislature), Eckhart had to have known Rubens well. While I have no reason to believe that Eckhart used Jensen for this Lake Geneva estate, Eckhart used Jensen for his Lake Forest, IL, estate in 1906-1907. Shortly prior thereto, Eckhart had become the reform President of the West Park Commission on July 15, 1905, which was followed by his immediate rehiring of Jensen. This residence, at 775 South Lake Shore Drive, was purchased from Mr. Eckhart by the forebears of Mr. and Mrs. Michael P. O'Malley, who have preserved it well.
In 1897, O. C. Simonds, the General Superintendent of Graceland Cemetery, had delivered a paper to The Chicago Horticultural Society that included the following:
". . . [The Superintendent] in charge [of a Chicago Park] should have no fear whatever of being replaced by another man; his whole thought should be given to the park, and, moreover, since he is responsible in a large measure for the manner in which the park is conducted, he should have absolute control of all the employees in the park, the laborers, gardeners, policemen, etc. . . . It is unfair to him to use men hired and controlled by some one else. In the selection of employees he will satisfy himself in regard to an applicant's ability to do a needed work, but will not inquire as to his nationality, his religion or his politics. The fact that a man is a Buddhist, Presbyterian or Agnostic would probably not interfere with his doing a good day's work at mowing grass. The Superintendent should have authority to discharge at once any man who showed no interest in his work; who worked rapidly when some one was looking at him, but rested most of the time when he thought himself alone; who talked too much with his fellow employees or attempted in any way to make them discontented. The ideal Superintendent would in time become acquainted with all the workers in the park and take some interest in them aside from securing the greatest amount of work for the money expended. . . . On the other hand, the Superintendent can often help to educate the park commissioners, or, if, fortunately, one of the commissioners should be a man of good taste the superintendent should show a readiness to learn and profit by any advice that may be given. . . . The man in charge of a public park has an opportunity to exert an influence which should place him on a level with the leading ministers, doctors and other professional men of the present times."
One can conclude that Simonds, from his secure employment as Superintendent of Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, could speak these words; to me, they could, just as well, have come, not from the hand of Simonds, but from the hand of Jensen, who, by then, would have been insecure in his employment by the West Park System.
In October, 1904, Uihlein had become the President of The Chicago Horticultural Society. By August, 1905, Eckhart, who was a truly fine civic man of the Chicago of his time, had rehired Jensen for Chicago's West Park System, to be its General Superintendent, a position that Jensen held for only a few years, as he was, as soon as Eckhart ceased to be the President of that System, shifted into a consultant's role - one that he held until 1920, when he resigned, after a massive expansion of the West Park System proposed by him was turned down.
I had seen no reference to Uihlein having advanced Jensen's cause with Eckhart, when at a Sunday afternoon lecture sponsored by The Friends of the Parks at Chicago's still-noteworthy Garfield Park Conservatory, promoted and effected by Jensen, I heard Stephen Christy say:
"A Chicagoan named Uihlein (pronouncing it correctly) introduced Jensen to Bernard Eckhart, thereby restoring Jensen to the West Park System and permitting Jensen to advance the cause of the building in which we are sitting."I was nonplused. While Christy and I had talked by telephone, we had never met. I had been a "walk-in" for his lecture, and, as a result, he could not have known that I was there. Afterwards, I stepped up and introduced myself, saying,
"You know, I think that you are right in what you said, but I have seen no documentary evidence of Uihlein's promotion, at that time, of Jensen."
Christy responded:
"Nor have I; that is what Malcolm Collier and I worked out. Nor is there any evidence that just that was not the case."
So, here is where I close this paper. I started with an effort to connect - to "cathect" - with my great grandfather. I have, in addition, connected him - Edward Uihlein - with Jens Jensen - connected the two so closely that I have become convinced that each had a significant impact on the career of the other - Jensen as a landscape architect for the nouveau riche German-Americans of Chicago, and Edward Uihlein as an operator of an open-to-the-public private horticultural park at the West End of Geneva Lake - a park from which no change in the winds of politics could displace him. He was displaced only by his death in 1921.
EPILOGUE
Uihlein, after being so ill in 1920 that he did not open his Lake Geneva house, died at his eldest daughter's home in Milwaukee in early 1921. The "big house", known as "Forest Glen" burned to rubble on a windy, clear, Winter morning in early 1922. In 1923, Edward Uihlein's heirs (four of his five children, his favorite daughter - Melita - having predeceased him), demolished Edward Uihlein's 1877 Wicker Park home and its 1888 conservatory and sold all of the acreage that had been assembled by him during his 20 years as a Geneva Lake property owner - both "Forest Glen" and the "Edward Uihlein Subdivision" - of fine shore line and substantial acreage to its rear, to a developer, Arthur Jensen - no relation to Jens Jensen. Arthur Jensen paid good lip service to the remarkable landscaping designed by Jens Jensen and maintained by Uihlein but filled his "Gardens" subdivision with much smaller homes - not the "first-class residences" called for by the 1892 agreement entered into by Uihlein's predecessor in title to his "Forest Glen" (George A. Weiss). That agreement has been the subject of a remarkable amount of litigation, and its language is traceable into the renowned "1910 Agreement" that has been involved in recent years in the Stone Manor and Baker lot litigation that has provided a great opportunity for local newspapers and politicians to take positions that draw attention to that agreement. In addition, that agreement appears to have been involved in the demise of the 1920's golf club that existed, briefly, on property behind J. H. Moore's renowned "Loramoor", a short way to the East of the Lake Geneva Country Club.
Fortunately, Russell Hovde's subdivision of Lot 1 of Edward Uihlein's Subdivision - once intended to be a golf course (stopped by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1908 in Boyden v. Roberts), and used as a polo field in the 1920's - contemplates, by its lot sizes, what any rational person would consider to be a "first-class residences", and his own is an example. Many of the structures on property elsewhere that was to have been used only for first-class residences are not up to that high standard.
Jens Jensen, himself, suffered a total loss by fire of his home at "The Clearing, near Ellison Bay, Door County, WI, in 1935, which fire destroyed all of his own records of projects executed by him before that date. Thus, all of the analysis of the 1900-1905 period in which I was, for the purposes of this paper, interested, must be derived from other sources, too many "secondary" to be as reliable as one would wish. Jensen died in 1951 and is buried in a plot obtained by his daughter, for Jensen, Jensen's wife, herself and her husband. The Clearing is, now, available for your and my use, for visits that have an educational orientation. The Ridges Sanctuary, on the East shore of Door County, near Bailey's Harbor is, in my experience, unique and well worth a visit, especially if there is a light snow on the ground that delineates the modest changes in ground levels. Needless to say, those circumstances bring out a welter of tracks of fauna. The 1930's Lincoln Memorial Gardens, in Springfield, IL, being a product of Jensen's mature years' thinking, are well worth a visit in any season. Mahoney Park in Kenilworth, IL, is in the process of restoration. A special place within Northwest Chicago is the 1923 "fountain" in the City of Chicago Park (not a Chicago Park District park) on the North edge of what was the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium on the Northwest Side. While it has been desecrated by ill-conceived changes and gross neglect, one will, therein, feel, immediately, at home in Jensen. Lastly, I understand that the restoration, in recent years, of Jensen's Prairie River design within The Chicago Park District's Columbus Park was well-done.
AFTERWORDS
Immediately after the delivery of this "paper", one of the senior members of The Literary Club of Chicago (Herman Lackner, mentioned in it in another connection), stepped up to me and offered to share the Wedding List" book maintained by his mother, in connection with her Chicago wedding on September 6, 1907. The guests included Mr. and Mrs. Edward G. Uihlein and two of their then unmarried daughters and their unmarried son, Mr. and Mrs. John Kranz and two of their unmarried daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Hermann Paepcke and their unmarried daughter, who was, soon, to marry Louis Guenzel (father of Paul Guenzel, mentioned in my paper), Mr. and Mrs. John Grommes, Mr. & Mrs. Carl Schurz, etc., many of whom were neighbors on North Dearborn Parkway. Thus, it was obvious that the men with whom Jensen dealt, not only had extensive business and civic connections with each other, but had close social connections, as weddings in that day were not of the size of weddings today.
Then, I reflected further on my tentative conclusion that both Ida Kranz and Clara Uihlein had been married under the auspices of the St. Paul's "Lutheran" Church on Fullerton Parkway, based on my father having mentioned that Florence Kranz, the eldest Kranz daughter, had been exceedingly generous to that church on her death, not long after it had suffered a disastrous fire in the 1950's (1955), and on Notz Family lore to the effect that one grandmother had been a bridesmaid in the wedding party of the other - presumably, as she was married last of the two, Clara Uihlein, in the wedding party of Ida Kranz. Finding the office of that church (actually "Evangelical and Reformed", as a result of a schism in the late 1800's from the Lutheran congregation then on LaSalle Street) open on a weekday, I was given free perusal of the marriage "log". I started in 1898 (the year of the building of a significant church structure on that site), I, quickly, found an astonishing number of weddings of members of children of members of that congregation whose names I recognized, including those in the Edward Uihlein Family and in the John Grommes Family, in particular. Not relevant to the analysis in this paper were those in the John Kranz Family, for which records of the baptisms of all Kranz daughters and of my own father exist (notwithstanding the fact that he was, actually, born in Saginaw, MI.
EXCERPT FROM "PRAIRIE ON THE LAKES"
John K. Notz, Jr. Copyright, 1996
Since my delivery of my Uihlein/Jensen relationships paper, I found in the 1910 Annual Exhibition catalogue of The Chicago Architectural Club (in the archives of The Art Institute of Chicago), a good copy of a photograph titled "Water Garden at Lake Geneva by Jens Jensen". (To be reconciled is a reference in the list of actual exhibits also within that catalogue to a "Water Garden in Humboldt Park"; a old postcard that I have of a pergola in Humboldt Park reflects a pergola with a differing number of columns, and the site thereof does not appear at all consistent with the photograph.) Many photographs of excellent quality were taken at "Forest Glen" by Edwin A. Seipp, (a Yale-trained architect, one of Uihlein's sons-in-law and, by then, himself, a member of The Chicago Architectural Club). Seipp's collection of exceedingly high quality photographs and glass slides has survived, divided among two of his grandsons, my cousins, Ren Goltra of Lake Forest, IL, and Peter Goltra of Virginia; thus, a better identification by me of "Water Garden at Lake Geneva by Jens Jensen" may be feasible. With respect to the other sites of Jensen landscape projects on Geneva Lake, I have studied old maps for the locations of stream beds in which a pool of that magnitude could have been created; there seem to be none. In addition to walking through what remains of Uihlein's "Forest Glen", I have visited Grommes' "Allview", Young's "Moorings", Wacker's "Fair Lawn", Hately's "Galewood", Chalmers' "Dronley" and its adjacent Conference Point Park, and Byllesby's "Negawni" (all of the pre-1910 sites of Jensen's designs around Geneva Lake). Only the geography of Uihlein's "Forest Glen" could have accommodated the pool pictured. Only with respect to Wacker's "Fair Lawn" have the current owners (the Cooney Family) mentioned the one-time presence of pools; those are said by them to have been "small". Such a large pool, in such a private context among mature trees and shrubbery, with the small pergola to the rear, leads me to believe that the scene is not in a fully public park, but on a private land holding. On Geneva Lake, only Edward Uihlein's "Forest Glen" contains a stream of the magnitude that would permit a pool such as that photograph contains. The 1926 subdivision that followed Uihlein's 1921 death, and the damaging storm and Spring runoff water in the ensuing years has extensively damaged the upper portion of "Forest Glen"; such development and damage are plausible explanations for the present absence of any trace of such a pool or pergola.
Within a few days after my finding of that lovely photograph, one of my Goltra cousins showed me an 1897 book containing Edward Uihlein's bookplate - a volume titled "Water Gardens", with descriptions thereof therein - evidence that Uihlein, in the appropriate time period, had "water gardens" very much on his mind
(modified 12/20/96)
APPENDIX
JENS JENSEN'S EARLIEST PRIVATE PROJECTS
St. Ann's Hospital 1899 Austin/Oak Park, IL Hugh M. G. Garden
Edward G. Uihlein 1901 Lake Geneva, WI Henry Lord Gay (1892)
Paepcke, Hermann 1901-1904 Indianola, Glencoe, IL Jebson & Fromann
Mosser, Edwin Jacob 1902 Edgewater, IL George W. Maher (1902)
Wacker, Charles (1902-1903?) Lake Geneva, WI (Property bought in 1893)
Maher, George W. 1902-1903 Kenilworth, IL George W. Maher (1893)
Logan, F. G. 1903 Glencoe, IL
Stensland, P. O. 1903 Irving Park, IL
Grommes, John B. 1903-1906 Lake Geneva, WI Richard Schmidt/Hugh Garden
Rubens, Harry 1903-1906 Glencoe, IL George W. Maher
Perkins, Dwight Heald 1904 Evanston, IL Dwight Heald Perkins
Orb, John 1904 Glencoe, IL
Haight, Rufus J. 1904 Palos Park, IL
Podatz, Jacob 1904 Palos Park, IL
Chalmers, W. J. 1904-1905 Lake Geneva, WI
Magnus, A. C. 1904-1905 Winnetka, IL Robert C. Spencer, Jr.
Hately, J. C. 1904-1910 Lake Geneva, WI
Young, Otto (1905?) Lake Geneva, WI
Farson, John 1905 "Pleasant Home", Oak Park, IL George W. Maher
Hubbard, Henry M. 1905 Lake Forest, IL
Kohn, L. 1905 Homewood, IL
Cargill, W. W. 1905-1909 LaCrosse, WI Hugh M. G. Garden
Kilbourne, L. B. 1905-1910 Highland Park, IL
Lackner, Francis 1906 Kenilworth, IL
Norton, C. D. 1906 Lake Forest, IL
Eckhart, Bernard A. 1906-1907 Lake Forest, IL
Armour, J. Ogden 1906-1916 Lake Forest, IL
Pabst, Frederick 1907 Oconomowoc, WI (Pabst and Uihlein were friends)
***
UIHLEIN FAMILY PROJECTS
Project Date(s) Place Edward G. Uihlein 1901 Lake Geneva, WI
Albert O. Trostel 1909-1910 Milwaukee, WI Ernest Liebert/Adolph Finkler
Edgar J. Uihlein 1914 Lake Bluff, IL
***
Highlighting indicates corrective and amplificative information that I have developed, independent of that derived from Grese's Appendices.
Excerpt from Marquis' "Who's Who in Chicago and Vicinity" (1936 ed.)
JENSEN, Jens, landscape architect; born Denmark, September 13, 1860; son of Christian and Magdalen Sofia (Petersen) Jensen; educated at the Agricultural College, Jutland, Denmark; further studies in agriculture and horticulture at Copenhagen and later studied at Berlin and Hanover, Germany; married Anne M. Hansen, of Denmark, 1884. Came to U.S. 1884; superintendent of Union and other small city parks of West Park System, Chicago, 1890-1894; superintendent of Humboldt Park, 1894-1900; landscape architect and general superintendent of West Park System, 1906-1909; consulting landscape architect of same, 1909-1920. President of Friends of Our Native Landscape; governing member of Art Institute of Chicago (life). Fellow, American Geological Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science; member, Illinois Academy of Science, Chicago Academy of Science. Club: Cliff Dwellers. Home: 1121 Elmwood Avenue, Wilmette, IL. Studio: Ellison Bay, WI.
Excerpt from Marquis' "Who's Who in Chicago" (1926 ed.)
JENSEN, Jens, landscape architect; born Dybbol, Denmark, September 13, 1860; son of Christian and Magdalen Sofia (Petersen) Jensen; educated at the Agricultural College, Jutland, and Tune, near Copenhagen; further studies in Berlin and Hanover, Germany; married Anne M. Hansen, of Denmark, 1884; children: Edward C., Magdalen S., Katherine (Mrs. Edison L. Wheeler), Edith D. (Mrs. Marshall L. Johnson). Came to U.S. 1884; superintendent of Union and other small city parks of West Park System, Chicago, 1890-1894; superintendent of Humboldt Park, 1894-1900; member of the Special Park Commission of Chicago, 1902-1913; landscape architect and general superintendent of West Park System, 1906-1909; consulting landscape architect, West Park System, 1909-1920. Member of Art Commission of Chicago, The Friends of Our Native Landscape (President); Governing Member of Art Institute of Chicago (life); Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science and of American Geological Society. Club: Cliff Dwellers. Recreation: nature studies. Home: 1121 Elmwood Avenue, Wilmette, IL. Studio: "The Clearing", Ellison Bay, WI.
Neither entry makes mention of The Chicago Horticultural Society.
***
Excerpt from Marquis' "The Book of Chicagoans" (1911 ed.)
UIHLEIN, Edward Gustav, brewer; born Wertheim-on-the Main, Baden, Germany, October 19, 1845; son of Benedict and Katherine (Krug) Uihlein; graduated Wertheim Gymnasium, 1871; came to the United States, June, 1864; married January, 1875, Augusta Manns, St. Louis, MO; children: Clara (Mrs. A. O. Trostel, Milwaukee), Edgar, Olga (Mrs. Henry Beneke, Chicago) Ella, [later married Edwin A. Seipp, Chicago], Melita [later married William C. Seipp, Jr.]. Was employed in the grocery business in St. Louis for three years; manufacturer of oils in Chicago, 1867-1871; since January 1, 1872, in charge of the Chicago agency of the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. of Milwaukee and now vice president of the company. Member, Chicago and Milwaukee Brewers' Association, United States Brewers' Association; was West Park Commissioner for three years under Governor Altgeld [1894-1896]. President, The Chicago Horticultural Society; President, German [now, Grant] Hospital. Mason (32). Has a notable collection of tropical palms and orchids from all parts of the world, and his collection is considered one of the best in America. Clubs: Germania, Orpheus, Teutonia, Maennerchor, German Press. Recreations: gardening and farming. Summer home: Forest Glen, on Lake Geneva. Residence: 2041 Ewing Place [Wicker Park, Chicago]. Office: Ohio and North Union Streets [now, under the Ohio Street exit of Edens Expressway].
By 1911, Uihlein also had become a member of the Lake Geneva Country Club and the Lake Geneva Yacht Club; I know of no reason for his omission of these two clubs. With respect to The Chicago Horticultural Society, I suspect that, after 1911, perhaps because of the hysterical anti-German feeling of "The World War", it went into a moribund state, not to be resurrected until after World War II.
Excerpts from Marquis' "The Book of Chicagoans" (1911 ed.)
except where noted as to another source):
PAEPCKE, Hermann, lumberman; born at Schwerin, Germany, February 12, 1851; son August and Louise Paepcke; educated in Wismar, Germany; married Indianola, TX, 1878, Paula Wagner; children: Sophie, Lydia, Alice, Walter. In lumber business in Chicago since 1881; now President and director of Paepcke-Leicht Lumber Company, Chicago Mill & Lumber Company, Chicago Packing Box Company, Helena Lumber & Box Company (Arkansas). American. Box Company. (Chicago). Republican. Clubs: Chicago Athletic, Union League, Skokie Golf, Germania. Recreations: golf, motoring. Summer Residence: Glencoe, IL Residence: 140 Pearson Street. Office: 940 West Chicago Avenue.
MOSSER, Edwin Jacob, lawyer, born November 16, 1870; A.B. Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA; LL.B. University of Michigan, 1899. Admitted to the Illinois Bar, 1900, and since engaged in practice in Chicago. Republican. Clubs: University, Hamilton. Residence: 750 Kenesaw Terrace [now Hutchinson Street], Chicago. Office: Corn Exchange Bank Building. (Marquis, 1911 ed.)
MOSSER, Edwin Jacob, lawyer, born November 16, 1870; A.B. Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA; LL.B. University of Michigan, 1899. Admitted to the Illinois Bar, 1900, and since practiced in Chicago; now member of Rubens, Fischer, Mosser & Barnum. Member of the American, Illinois State and Chicago Bar Associations, Chicago Law Institute, International Law Association, Alpha Tau Omega. Trustee, Henrotin Hospital. Republican. Clubs: University, Medinah Country, Ridgmoor Country, Michigan Northwoods. Home: 25 East Walton Place. Office: 105 West Adams Street, Chicago. [Marquis, 1936 ed.] [Note: While no mention thereof is made in Mosser's entries in Marquis' editions of "Who's Who", his obituary is said to reflect that he had been married to Harry Rubens' daughter.]
WACKER, Charles Henry, capitalist; born in Chicago on August 29, 1856; son of Frederick and Catherine (Hummel) Wacker; educated in Chicago public schools and Lake Forest (Illinois) Academy and at Stuttgart, Germany; married Ottilie M. Glade, 1887 (died October 26, 1904); children: Frederick G., Charles H., Jr., Rosalie. Traveled in U.S., Europe and Africa, 1876-1879; joined his father in 1880 in establishing the malting firm of F. Wacker & Son, which later became Wacker & Birk Brewing & Malting Company, of which he [Charles] was president, 1884-1901; was also president of McAvoy Brewing Company for several years; president of Chicago Heights Land Association, Chicago Heights Gas Company, Chicago Heights Terminal Transfer Railroad Company, Chicago Heights Street Railway Company; director of Corn Exchange National Bank, Calumet & Chicago Canal & Dock Company, North American Trading & Transportation Company; member of the Executive Committee of the South Side Elevated Railway Company, Chicago Title & Trust Company. Was director and member of the Committee of Ways and Means, Chicago Exposition; president of United Charities of Chicago; president of the Chicago Plan Commission; governing member of The Art Institute of Chicago. Clubs: Chicago, Commercial, University, Union League, Bankers', Germania, Chicago Athletic, Mid-Day, Iroquois, Onwentsia, City, Lake Geneva Country, Lake Geneva Yacht. Residence: 1341 North State Street. Office: 134 South LaSalle Street.
MAHER, George Washington, architect; born Mill Creek, West Virginia, December 25, 1864; son of Theodore Daniel and Sarah (Landis) Maher; educated in Indiana public schools; studied architecture, beginning 1878, under the Chicago architects, August Bauer and Henry W. Hill; completed his studies in J. L. Silsby's office; then studied in Europe; married in Chicago, October 25, 1894, Elizabeth Brooks; one son, Philip Brooks. Began practice of architecture, 1888; has developed a specialty in residence and monumental work, and in shaping, architecturally, such suburbs as North Edgewater and Kenilworth, including a unique landscape effect to the latter town. Architect of residences of John Farson, Oak Park; James A. Patten, Evanston; A. B. Leach, South Orange, NJ; Harry Rubens estate at Glencoe; Edgewater Presbyterian Church; Northwestern University Gymnasium; Swift Engineering Hall, Northwestern University; Assembly Hall, Kenilworth; and others, which he has individualized and which follow no established precedent, but represent a new thought, or rather American effort, in architecture. Member of American Institute of Architects. Republican. Presbyterian. Clubs: University Club of Evanston, Union League, Chicago Athletic. Recreations: motoring and fruit farming in Michigan on scientific principles. Residence: Kenilworth, IL. Office: Karpen Building.
MAHER, George Washington (1864-1926) (from Grese's Appendices, not from Marquis) - Architect, born in Mill Creek, WV. At the age of 13, Maher began working in the Chicago offices of August Bauer and Henry Hill. Maher worked for a short time with George Emslie and Frank Lloyd Wright at the office of Joseph Lyman Silsbee, and later practiced on his own. Maher specialized in designing residences and suburban towns.
LOGAN, Frank Granger, retired commission merchant; born on a farm in Cayuga County, NY, on October 7, 1891; son of Simeon Ford and Phebe (Hazen) Logan; educated in public schools and in Ithaca (NY) Academy; married 1882, Josie, daughter of John L. Hancock of Chicago; children, Rhea (Mrs. Charles A. Munroe), Stuart, Howard, Spencer, Waldo, Came to Chicago, 1870; clerk in dry goods house of Field, Leiter & Co.; then for a Board of Trade firm before establishing, in 1876, under style of F. G. Logan & Co., in the commission grain trade. Made a fine collection of archaeological specimens, which he exhibited in the anthropological department of World's Columbian Exposition; also a collection of interesting relics of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln, exhibited in the Illinois Building. Congregationalist; officer of Plymouth Church. Member, Chicago Historical Society; vice president, Art Institute of Chicago. Clubs: Union League, City, Onwentsia, South Shore County, Cliff Dwellers, Midlothian. Recreations: Interested in art. Residence: 2919 Prairie Avenue. Office: Board of Trade.
GROMMES, John Baptist, wholesale wine and liquor merchant; born in Schoenberg, Prussia, September 14, 1844; son of Hubert and Catherine (Klein) Grommes; educated in public and private schools; married in Chicago, December 6, 1873, Bertha Lehrkind; children: Clara (Mrs. Frank A. Rehm), Bertha, Frieda (Mrs. Armin W. Brand). In 1860, established present business of Grommes & Ulrich. Clubs: Lake Geneva Golf, Exmoor (Highland Park). Recreation: golf. Residence: Congress Hotel. Office: 136 South Dearborn Street.
REHM, Frank Albert, vice president ant treasurer, Grommes & Ulrich; born in Chicago, July 11, 1873; son of Jacob and Phoebe ( Reichenbacher) Rehm; graduated North Division High School; married Clara L. Grommes of Chicago, October 6, 1896; one daughter, Louise Grommes. Began business career in 1895, as an employee of Grommes & Ulrich, wholesale liquor and cigar merchants; became a stockholder in 1898 and was elected vice-president and treasurer. Clubs: Chicago Athletic, Germania Maennerchor, Glen View Golf, Mid-Day, Lake Geneva Country. Recreations: reading and music. Residence: 1505 Dearborn Avenue. Office: 132 South Dearborn Street.
RUBENS, Harry, lawyer; born in Vienna, Austria, July 7, 1850; graduated from Polytechnic School, Vienna. Came to the U.S. in 1867; in journalism as city editor of Westliche Post, St. Louis; associated with Joseph Keppler, artist, in founding at St. Louis, 1871, the comic journal Puck, now of New York; private secretary to U.S. Senator Carl Schurz, 1871-1872; assistant secretary of Missouri Senate, 1872-1873; removed to Chicago, 1873; was local editor of Chicago Freie Presse; later with the Chicago Times and Evening Mail; admitted to Illinois bar , June 8, 1877; was member (1879-1885), president (1882-1885) of Chicago Public Library. For several years was attorney for Liquor Dealers' State and National Associations. Delegate to Democratic National Convention, 1884; counsel to Chicago Board of Education (1885-1887); corporation counsel (1894-1895); judge advocate general, Illinois State Militia (1895-1896); now general counsel and director of United Breweries Company and other large corporations; counsel to the consulates-general of Austria-Hungary, German and Russia at Chicago; member of the law firm of Rubens, Fischer & Mosser. President, Germania Club for several terms. Decorated by the Emperor of Germany with Order of the Crown, 1902, and by the Emperor of Austria with Order of Iron Crown, 1906. Club: Chicago, Onwentsia, Union League. Residences: 23 Walton Place and Glencoe, IL. Office: Corn Exchange Bank Building.
PERKINS, Dwight Heald, architect; born Memphis, TN on March 26, 1867; son of Marland Leslie and Marion (Heald) Perkins; educated in Chicago public schools; took two year partial course in architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1885-1887; instructor in architecture in same for 1887-1888; married in Hopkinton, MA,, August 18, 1891 to Lucy A. Fitch; two children: Eleanor Ellis and Lawrence Lincoln. In the practice of architecture in Chicago since January 1, 1894; architect for the Chicago Board of Education, 1905-1910: Member of the Municipal Art Commission; member of the Special Park Commission, 1899-1909. Fellow of the American Institute of Architects; member of the Chicago Architectural Club. Residence: 2319 Lincoln Street, Evanston, IL. Office 1100, 6 North Clark Street.
PERKINS, Dwight Heald (1867-1941) (from Grese's Appendices, not from Marquis) - Chicago architect, born in Memphis, TN. In 18887, Perkins graduated from MIT with a degree in architecture. Moving to Chicago after graduation, he worked in several architectural offices - most notably that of Burnham & Root from 1888 to 1894 - and thereafter on his own. He was a partner in the firm of Perkins & Hamilton from 1905-1911; Perkins, Fellows & Hamilton from 1911 to 1927 and Perkins, Chatten & Hammond from 1927 to 1935. From 1905-1911, Perkins was chief architect for the Chicago Board of Education. Perkins served on numerous park boards with Jensen and was president of the Chicago Regional Planning Association, which fought to pass the enabling legislation to establish forest preserves in Illinois.
STENSLAND, Paul O., banker; born in Stavenger, Norway, on May 9, 1847; son of Ole and Kari Stensland; educated in the common schools of Norway; married in Chicago in 1871 to Karen Eide; children: Theodore, Inga. At 18, went from Norway to India and was there engaged in office work and, later, as a buyer of cotton for English and native merchants, traveling in Hindustan, Persia and Arabia; came to Chicago in 1871; first, engaged in the dry goods business, later in insurance and, then, in the real estate and investment business, as head of the firm of Paul O. Stensland & Company. Has been a member of The Chicago Board of Education and a Director of the World's Columbian Exposition. Democrat. Lutheran. Club: Union League. Office: 415 Milwaukee Avenue. Residence: Byron Avenue, at the corner of Lawndale Avenue. (1907 Marquis' "The Book of Chicagoans")
ORB, John Alexander, born Hessen-Darmstadt, Germany, and July 26, 1854; son of John and Sybil (Schahl) Orb; educated at the Academy of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN; married at Chicago to Ruth Young; children: John Alexander, Jr., Helen Ruth, Catherine Sybil. Began in the mechanical department of the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company. In 1874, learning the brewing business thoroughly and remained until 1882, when he became superintendent of the West Side Brewing Company, advancing from that position to president; then became director and president of the Chicago Consolidated Brewing and Malting Company and also of the Conrad Seipp Brewing Company, City Brewing Company and West Side Brewery Company; was also president of George Bullen Company, maltsters, and of City of Chicago Investment Company. Disposed of the above interests in 1905 and is now engaged in looking after his personal investments. Director of Western Stone Company; vice president and director of Schiller Company. Independent in politics. Club: Germania. Recreation: traveling. Residence: 2901 Michigan Avenue. Office: Teutonic Building.
CHALMERS, William James, manufacturer; born in Chicago, July 10, 1852; son of Thomas and Janet (Telfer) Chalmers; educated in the public and private schools of Chicago; married in October, 1878, to Joan, daughter of the late Allan Pinkerton; children: Joan, Thomas Stuart. After leaving school, was apprenticed to the Eagle Works Manufacturing Company, of which his father was then General Superintendent; in 1872, became associated with his father in the new firm of Fraser & Chalmers, which, beginning with 50 men, increased its working force to more than 2,000, becoming the largest manufacturer of mining machinery in the world and with a trade wherever mines are opened; a branch was established at Erith, near London, England, in 1891; business was incorporated in 1899, when he became Vice President and Treasurer and, in January, 1891, its President; in 1900, united with the great Allis Machine Works at Milwaukee and other plants as the Allis-Chalmers Company, of which he was Vice President. President of Commercial National Safe Deposit Company; director of Fraser & Chalmers, Ltd., London, England. Republican. Has been a member of The Board of Education, director of the World's Fair Exposition, Chicago Athenaeum, Field Museum of Natural History. Clubs: Chicago, Union League, Chicago Athletic, Illinois (ex-President), Commercial, South Shore Country, Lake Geneva Country, Saddle & Cycle; also, Engineers' (NY). Recreation: travel. Residence: 1100 Lake Shore Drive. Office: Commercial National Bank Building.
HATELY, John Craig, capitalist; born Durham, England, October 30, 1845; son of John and Jane (Craig) Hately; educated in the public schools of Durham, England; married in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, January 1871, Annabella Robson; children: John George, Ethel Craig, Margaret M., Louise. After leaving school, apprenticed to provision business in Durham, England, from 1859, and later with Furness & Company, Hartlepool, England, until he came to Chicago in 1873; established in provision trade as John C. Hately, Chicago, 1873-1881, then member of Hately Bros., packers U.S. Yards, from 18881 until he withdrew in 1895. Chairman of Chicago Beach Hotel Company. Member of Chicago Board of Trade. Republican. Clubs: Union League (director), Lake Geneva Country, Mid-Day, City. Residence: Chicago Beach Hotel and Lake Geneva, WI. Office: Chicago Board of Trade.
HATELY, Walter Craig, exporter of grain and provisions; born in the County of Durham, England, September 5, 1848; son of John and Jane (Craig) Hately; educated in the public schools of England, then entered British merchant service as cadet apprentice, learning steamship and navigation, and was Second Officer of a merchant steamer when he came to the U.S. in 1873; married at Brantford, Ontario, September 9, 1874. was engaged at Brantford, Ontario, as grain exporter, 1873-1882; came to Chicago and established, under the present firm name of Hately Bros., a business in the exporting of grain and provisions. Member of The Chicago Board of Trade, Chicago Association of Commerce. Episcopalian. Clubs: Union League, Highland Park. Residence: Highland Park, IL. Office: Board of Trade.
LACKNER, Francis, lawyer; born Detroit, MI, October 14, 1840; son of Francis C. and Rosamund (Rademacher) [per Herman Lackner, Rukenberger] Lackner; graduated from German-American Academy of Milwaukee; married Columbus, WI, 1872, Nannie Jussen; children: Meta (Mrs. Franklin Corbin), Else, Irma, Francis A., Beatrice. Served in Civil War, 1862-1865, entering the service as a second lieutenant and rising to the rank of major, and after the war was brevetted lieutenant colonel. Served with his regiment and also on the staff of General Carl Schurz and General Daniel Butterfield as judge advocate and assistant inspector-general of the Third Division, Twentieth Army Corps. Admitted to the Illinois bar, 1866, and since engaged in practice in Chicago; now senior of the firm of Lackner, Butz & Miller. Republican. Member of the Military Order of Loyal Legion. Clubs: Union League, University. Recreation: golf. Residence: Kenilworth, IL. Office: Title & Trust Building.
ECKHART, Bernard Albert, manufacturer; born Alsace, Germany, 1852; son Jacob & Eva (Root) Eckhart; arrived with parents in U.S. in infancy; graduated from a college in Milwaukee, 1868; married Katie L. Johnston of Cincinnati, December 25, 1874; Chicago representative of Eagle Milling Company, Milwaukee, 1870-1874; founded firm of Eckhart & Swan, which later became Eckhart & Swan Milling Company, of which he is president and a director; director, Continental & Commercial trust & Savings Bank, Harris Trust & Savings Bank, Chicago Title & Trust Company. Member, Illinois Senate, 35th and 36th General Assemblies (1887-1889); Member, Board of Trustees, Sanitary District of Chicago, 1891-1900 (president of the board, 1896-1900; President of the board, West Chicago Park Commissioners, 1905-1908 [after stepping down, he continued as its Treasurer for several years]; Delegate and Chairman, Committee on Rules, Procedure and General Plans of the Chicago Charter Convention, 1905; appointed member , Railroad & Warehouse Commission of Illinois, 1907. Assisted in organizing and officer, 1st Regiment, Illinois National Guard; Aide-de-Camp with rank of Colonel on staff of Governor Deneen since 1906. Republican. Director, Chicago Board of Trade, 1888-1891; 1st President, Millers' National Federation, 1902-1904; President, Illinois Manufacturers' Association, 1903; vice president, National Council of Commerce, 1908; U.S. Delegate, International Congress on Commercial Education, Vienna, 1910. Trustee, Lewis Institute; member of Executive Committee created to prepare a bill for Illinois Legislature for creation of Municipal Court of Chicago. Clubs: Chicago, Union League, Illinois, Onwentsia, Commercial, Exmoor. Residence: 210 Ashland Boulevard. Office: 1414 Carroll Avenue.
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