USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 2 > Part 40
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WILLIAM AUGUSTINE LEAHY was born in Boston July 18, 1867. He received his degree from Harvard in 1888 and spent a year there in post-graduate study. After some experience in teaching, he became editorial writer and literary editor of the Boston Traveler. A term of several years as secretary of the Music Department of the City of Boston followed. He has since served as secretary to one Mayor of Boston and research assistant to another. He has written, compiled and edited several published volumes and has also written much poetry and criticism.
WILLARD DE LUE was born in Boston, of native parents, themselves of New England, Irish, English and French ancestry. He is thus better equipped than some others to understand and interpret the various racial elements that make up the American blend. For more than twenty years he has been asso- ciated with the Boston Globe, taking his place by merit and study in the group of feature writers who have given the editorial page of that paper its rare dis- tinction, especially in the field of history. Most of his work has appeared in newspapers, extending from coast to coast. He is co-author of "The Civil War Day by Day," author of "The Generals After the War," "Tales of the
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Olde Towne," "The Story of Walpole" (published by the town), and many artieles on Revolutionary New England. He has also leetured on historieal subjeets before patriotie soeieties and on the radio.
ALFRED CHESTER HANFORD, PH. D., was born in Illinois in 1891 and taught at the University of Illinois before coming to Harvard, where he has served sinee 1915 in the various aseending grades and now holds a full pro- fessorship in the Departinent of Government. As seeretary for the eominis- sion on new sourees of revenue for Boston in 1921 he aequired a practical knowl- edge of the workings of the present municipal eharter, so that his artiele is based on experienee as well as research. Professor Hanford has published a book on "Problems in Municipal Government" and is an editor of the "Polit- ieal Seienee Review." Sinee 1927 he has been dean of Harvard College. From the exacting duties of this office he took time to prepare his artiele, which is the first complete and authoritative study of its subjeet.
JOSEPH HENRY BEALE was born in Boston in 1861 and received his academie and legal education at Harvard. For more than forty years he has taught in the Harvard Law School, where he is Royall Professor of Law. He has published many books on law and is a recognized authority on his specialty. The eloser administrative union of the eities and towns comprising Greater or Metropolitan Boston has engaged his attention and he reeently helped draft and presented to the General Court a measure aimed at sueh union. Professor Beale is a fellow of the American Aeademy of Arts and Seiences. In recognition of his distinguished position as a teacher and a writer upon law he has received the degree of LL. D. from Cambridge University, England, as well as from Harvard, the University of Wiseonsin and the University of Chieago.
HENRY PARKMAN, JR., born in Boston in 1894, was edueated at Harvard College, where he received the degrees of A. B. in 1915 and A. M. in 1916, and later at the Harvard and Northeastern University Law Sehools. From 1926 to 1929 he sat in the Boston City Council and from 1929 to the present date he has been a member of the State Senate. In each body he has served on important eommittees and has shown an aptitude for eonstruetive work, arising from a genuine interest in the praetieal problems of government. Sueh an expe- rienee qualifies liim to diseuss the relations of the City of Boston to the State, and his reputation for fairness assures an impartial treatment of disputed issues. Mr. Parkman was president of the Republican Club of Massachusetts for three years.
JAMES MORGAN, a Kentuekian by birth, a Virginian by deseent, and a Middle-Westerner in boyhood, has passed all his manhood in and about Boston. He has been a diligent student of the history of Boston and Massa- chusetts and a persistent pilgrim to the shrines and backgrounds of that great story. As a member of the staff of the Boston Globe, he has attended all the national eonventions of both parties in more than forty years and has been a
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close observer of the men and measures that have made our political history. He is the author also of a list of books which includes the following titles: "Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the Man," "Abraham Lincoln, the Boy and the Man," "In the Footsteps of Napoleon," "Our Presidents," "The Birth of the American People," and "Timeworn Paths of the Old Bay State." These writings gleam with concise, pregnant, original observations, which happily escape the artificiality of the epigram. They are noted for their just estimate of historical figures and their insight into political principles. Mr. Morgan would probably describe himself as a journalist. Perhaps for that very reason few writers have succeeded so well in making American history seem contemporary, that is, human and alive.
Upon the resignation in 1927 of James A. Mckibben, long secretary of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, that organization was faced with the problem of choosing a worthy successor. Such a man was found in MELVILLE D. LIMING, who had been one of the organizers and manager since 1920 of its Bureau of Commercial and Industrial Affairs. Mr. Liming was, like Mr. McKibben, a Middle-Westerner and a college graduate. Born in Ohio in 1882, he has received degrees from Miami and from Harvard. For two years he held a fellowship in Harvard and for one year he was Assistant in the Department of Government. Two years spent subsequently as an instructor in political science and transportation at Tufts and a miscellaneous experience as an attorney, a reorganizer of banks and a research member of the staff of the National Industrial Conference Board have fitted him admirably for the varied duties of the position he now holds and for the writing of the article on Commerce in this volume.
THOMAS F. ANDERSON, born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1865, has lived in Boston throughout the entire period of which his article treats. Originally a newspaper man, he served five years on the old Boston Traveler and eighteen years on the Boston Globe. During this period he wrote extensively concerning the industrial and commercial life of the city and had close relations with many of its business and civic leaders. His more noteworthy investigations included a two months' study of the port and steamship facilities of Europe and a three months' tour of observation in South America. For the past twenty years Mr. Anderson has been the efficient secretary-treasurer of the New England Shoe and Leather Association, the oldest organization in this section devoted to the interests of the leather industries. In this capacity he has not only mastered thoroughly his particular field but maintained an active and compre- hensive interest in the commercial, industrial and financial welfare of the community.
FRANK GLEASON FITZPATRICK, born in West Newton in 1878, is true to the Boston tradition which combines ripe culture and thorough academic training with successful participation in business. He is a son of Thomas B. Fitzpatrick, one of the founders of the long established firm of Brown Durrell Company, wholesale manufacturers and distributors. Degrees of A. B. and A. M. at Harvard prepared him for several years spent at various periods in
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study and travel in Europe. From 1906 to 1912 he was an instructor in the Fine Arts Department at Harvard and his continuing interest in art is expressed by his life membership in the Arts and Crafts Society, of the Council of which he was formerly a member. Since 1917 he has been superintendent of the Boston store of Brown Durrell Company and recently he was elected a director of the Chamber of Commerce.
During her incumbency, recently ended, of the position of Assistant Com- missioner of the Massachusetts Department of Labor and Industries, ETHEL M. JOHNSON exerted a strong influence on administrative policies affecting the welfare of working women and children. For this service a woman's under- standing and sympathy were considered necessary and few women in Massa- chusetts can have had her all-round preparation for the task. Born in Maine, she attended Normal School and taught in the public schools of her native state and of New Hampshire. She then came to Boston and worked her way through the Simmons College School of Library Science and through Boston University. Her library training was put to good use in organizing a library on women in industry for the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. As her social and economic interests expanded, she passed through various executive offices before she was appointed to her responsible position in the state government by Governor Coolidge in 1919. Among her other official duties she had direction of the Division of Minimum Wage and editorial super- vision over the department publications, including a Manual of Labor Laws. Miss Johnson has also written miscellaneous essays and stories, besides papers on economic subjects, and was recently a speaker at a Round Table Conference of the Institute of Politics at Williamstown.
FREDERIC HAINES CURTISS was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1869 and educated at Adams Academy, Quincy, and at Harvard. During most of his career he has been connected with the banks of Boston, serving for many years as cashier and director of the First National Bank. In these positions he acquired the sound knowledge of minor and major finance which prepared him for the higher responsibilities that followed. Since 1914 he has been chairman of the board and federal reserve agent of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. In 1904 he was elected a member of the executive committee of the American Bankers' Association. He is also a member of the committee on economic research at Harvard and a trustee of the Boston Athenaeum and of- Wellesley College.
WILLIAM JAMES CUNNINGHAM was born in St. John, New Brunswick, in 1875, but received part of his education in Boston. Since 1916 he has been James J. Hill Professor of Transportation at Harvard, having previously served in the university as lecturer and assistant for several years. For this important chair, an innovation in the academic field, he was well prepared by practical work during nearly a quarter of a century in the traffic, operating and executive departments of various railroads, including all three of the chief New England lines. During the war he was assistant director of operation of the United
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States Railroad Administration. He has been president of the New England Railroad Club and of the Traffic Club of New England and was made an honorary Master of Arts by Harvard University in 1921.
HENRY INGRAHAM HARRIMAN was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1872. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1895 and two years later from the New York Law School. He was the first president of the New England Power Association, the largest electric and utility group in New England and one of the largest in the country, and is now chairman of its board of directors and president of the New England Power Company. He was president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce from 1917 to 1919 and from 1928 to 1931. He may be said to have specialized in the local transit problem, as he is ehairman of the board of public trustees of the Boston Elevated Railway Company, was for many years chairman of the Division of Metropolitan Planning and is now director of that Division. Hc is also a vice-chairman of the Trustees of the Metropolitan Transit District of Boston, a director of the Chamber of Com- merce of the United States and a Trustee of Wesleyan University.
GEORGE CASPAR HOMANS, a member of the class of 1932 at Harvard, has already shown unusual aptitude as a writer. He is an editor of the "Harvard Advocate" and undergraduate editor of the "Harvard Graduates' Magazine." As co-author with Professor Samuel E. Morison of "The Sea Story of Massa- chusetts," published in 1930, he shared the eredit of that admirable volume and his article in the present work shows what his unassisted pen can achieve. Mr. Homans was born in Boston in 1910. He is a descendant of the presidential Adams family and, as a nephew of Sceretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams, comes naturally by his interest in maritime affairs.
JAMES BRENDAN CONNOLLY, born in Boston in 1868, achieved fame as an Olympic champion jumper and saw military service in the Spanish War before developing his talent as a writer of sea storics. Of fishing ancestry and born within sight of the sea, he has roughed it in all weathers and lived to the fullest extent the life of his characters, whether fishermen or sailors. A rover by instinct, he has served in the United States Navy and has been a correspondent in places as far apart as Mexico and the submarine-infested European waters during the World War. A score of books, beginning with "Out of Gloucester" and "The Scincrs" and coming down to his "Book of the Gloucester Fisher- men," testify to his deep sympathy for the men of the sea and his genuine power as an interpreter of their always adventurous and often tragie lives. Mr. Connolly has added a new name to the line of New England sea writers that began with Dana and Melville.
PORTER HARTWELL ADAMS, born in Andover in 1894 and educated partly at the Institute of Technology, has been interested in aeronautics sinee his student days and is recognized now as one of the foremost experts in the country. Since 1922 he has been either chairman of the executive committee or president of the National Acronautic Association and chairman of the Municipal Air
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Board of Boston. He was vice-president of the International Air Congress held at Rome in 1927 and technical adviser for the American delegation at the International Civil Aeronautics Conference held in Washington in 1928. He has also been president of the Aero Club of New England and has held many other similar positions, both honorary and practical. He was an intelligence officer of the Navy during the World War and is a lieutenant commander in the United States Naval Reserve. He has contributed to various publications on the subject of aviation.
Amid a community grown too placid, perhaps, in its comfortable harmony of opinion there has arisen once more a vigorous questioner to revive the slumber- ing tradition of nonconformity. Yet ROBERT EMMONS ROGERS is no radical in either his social creed or his literary preferences. Extremists of the Left might accuse him rather of leaning backward in both,- a sufficient testimony of his breadth and candor. Born in New Jersey in 1888, of New England and English ancestry, he came to Cambridge to live and attended Harvard, receiving the degrees of A. B. and A. M. in 1909. One year of teaching at Williams, followed by several spent in the theater, in newspaper work and in travel, provided an unusual foundation for his work of the last eighteen years at the Institute of Technology; where he is now Associate Professor of English. As a lecturer in extension courses he has attracted a large following and more recently his incisive utterances from the platform and in the press upon education and social problems have gained the attention of the general public. Professor Rogers has written a fantasy in verse, entitled "Behind a Watteau Picture," an anthology, "The Voice of Science in Nineteenth Century Literature," a book on "The Fine Art of Reading," and a recent volume, "How to be Interesting," every page of which exemplifies its title.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD CHADWICK had scarcely finished his article on Music for this volume when he himself became one of the masters from whom no more can be asked and whose work may be at last judged as a whole. Born in Lowell, educated in America and abroad, he had been connected with the New England Conservatory of Music for more than half a century and had only resigned the directorship on January 1, 1931. A bare recital of dates, compositions, society affiliations and honorary degrees seems less appropriate in this place than two extracts from commemorative articles which appeared soon after his lamented death.
The first is from the editorial columns of the Transcript:
"Imagine a New England Yankee at the Court of Music - worshiping, but never losing his sense of humor; toiling, but never dulling the keen edge of his gusto; administering a great institution, yet never blunting his creative faculty - and you have pictured a bit of the delightful and various personality of the late George W. Chadwick.
"To chat with him was to dip into half a century's treasury of inusical history; for had he not been too modest he could have said, like Aeneas, of that history, 'All of which I saw and a large part of which I was.' And still
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continued to be; for the jolly youngster who came home from Leipzig with the Conservatory prize for his overture, 'Rip Van Winkle,' in 1881, had the 'go' in him to write only last summer down at West Chop those 'Three Little Pieces for Orchestra' performed here within a fortnight, music that bubbled with youth and high spirits. The young composer who was intrusted with the office of conducting J. K. Paine's music for the performances of the 'Oedipus Rex' in Greek carly in the 1880's was still so alert to life and art on an evening of last week that his running comment and reminiscence of musicians from Liszt at Weimar to Atkins at the Cathedral of Worcester could keep his listeners alternately absorbed with interest or in gales of laughter. What an engaging dash of the rogue there always remained in this man of eminence, and with it what a genuine and profound humility in the presence of all that was noble in the art of music! As creator, as teacher, as administrator, as inspirer of young talents, well did he serve his art."
The second is from a notice by Philip Hale in the Sunday Herald:
"The younger generation of concert-goers in Boston has little or no idea of the musical versatility and fertility of George Chadwick, the composer. He is better known to it as an admirable teacher under whose wise direction the New England Conservatory gained its reputation throughout the land.
"Whatever he wrote was well and carefully written from the technical point of view; there was solidity, proportion, a surety in expression. He did not strive to be ultra-'American' in his music; his wishi was to write good music that would be accepted and liked in any country. Still there are pages of his that only an American could have written."
Appreciative estimates of his work as a composer will be found in the books by John Tasker Howard and Paul Rosenfeld, mentioned in the note appended to his article.
Mr. Chadwick was seventy-seven years old at his death, which occurred on April 4, 1931.
WILLIAM HOWE DOWNES, born in Derby, Connecticut, in 1854, studied in this country and abroad and served a miscellaneous apprenticeship in news- paper work in Boston before establishing himself in his honored position as art critic of the Transcript. After more than thirty years of service in that capacity he retired in 1922. Since then he has published his authoritative life of John S. Sargent, a worthy companion to his earlier "Life and Works of Winslow Homer." Mr. Downes has also written "Twelve Great Artists," which reveals him as a most reverent and exquisite interpreter of the master- pieces of painting,- besides "Spanish Ways and Byways," "Arcadian Days," and many magazine articles on art. His "Boston Painters and Paintings" appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," July to December, 1888. He is an honorary associate of the Guild of Boston Artists.
RALPH ADAMS CRAM was born in New Hampshire in 1863 but has lived long in Boston. He has been supervising architect at Princeton, consulting architect at Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke and Wellesley, and is actively engaged
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in reconstructing and completing the great Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Independently and in association with Bertram G. Goodhue and others, he has designed many other important buildings. Though he lias wrought in other styles, it is as an adapter of the Gothic to modern needs that he has won international famc. His skill in achievement is well matched by his power in advocacy. Indeed, he is scarcely less distinguished as an author than as an architect. Few men have been as consistent as he in the support of a central conviction. A confident "Eureka!" might well be the motto of one who, in an age of uncertainty and confusion, proclaims triumphantly that he has found the Way and offers his life-work as example and demonstration of his faith. Mr. Cram is a member of many societies, American and foreign, and has received the degrees of Litt. D. from Princeton, Notre Dame and Williams, and LL. D. from Yale.
HENRY VINCENT HUBBARD was born in Taunton in 1875. Descended in an almost unbroken linc from an ancestry of Harvard graduates, reaching back to the first class of 1635, he lias maintained the continuity of this fine tradition in his own career. Graduating in 1897, he received from Harvard, in 1901, the first degree in landscape architecture given in this country; from 1906 to 1929 he was connected with the Harvard School of Landscape Archi- tecture, first as instructor and later as professor; and since 1929 he has been the Norton Professor of regional planning and head of the new School of City Plan- ning. Since 1920 he has also been a partner in the firm of Olmsted Brothers, landscape architects.
Besides his teaching and professional activities, he has promoted interest in landscape architecture and city planning by his writings. He was a founder and is chicf editor of the two well-known quarterlies, "Landscape Architecture" and "City Planning." Among his books are "Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design" and "Our Cities To-day and To-morrow," both written in conjunction with his wife, Theodora Kimball Hubbard, who, herself an authority in the same field, has been associated with her husband, before and since their marriage, in much of his literary work.
During the war Mr. Hubbard was called on to do important housing and city planning work for the Government, notably in the United States Housing Corporation. He is president (1931-33) of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and a former vice-president of the American City Planning Insti- tute. In 1931 President Hoover appointed him a member of the Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, to which he contributed valuable studies from his special knowledge of land subdivision problems.
PHILIP LESLIE HALE was a boy of fifteen in 1880 when his father, Edward Everett Hale, wrote several articles for the Winsor History. We hope that fifty years from now, if the anniversary should be commemorated by a his- torical review of the intervening period, its editors may find among the children of the present contributors one who is as worthy as Philip L. Hale to carry on the great traditions of the city. As a painter who had won many medals, as an original and stimulating teacher at the Art Museum, as a writer on art who
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gave to the world a real classic of criticism, he left Boston poorer by his death, which occurred on February 2, 1931, before he had had an opportunity to revise his article.
Better than any abridgment of so notable a life-story, necessarily formal and mechanical in its brevity, the following letter, which appeared in the Transcript, may suggest the unique personality and the large endowment of this many-sided artist.
"The untimely death of Philip L. Hale removes from Boston one of its most valuable assets. In modern days every man, to be successful, must excel in at least one thing. The exceptional man is he who can do more than one thing well. Even in the field of art how many men are there that have the talent of our friend, who was equally skillful in pastel, water color, dry point and oils and in every phase of drawing? Not only was he an artist par excel- lence, with innumerable honors to his credit, but as a lecturer his audiences were always completely absorbed in his subject and likewise in the lecturer himself. ยท His most monumental literary work is undoubtedly his large mono- graph, 'Jan Vermeer of Delft.' Without disparagement to others, it can truthfully be said that no work on Vermcer can possibly approach in com- pletencss and analysis this monograph of Philip Halc.
"About these phases of Philip Hale's activities, however, I do not fecl competent to write. But he had a side that is unusual for a man so stecpcd in art, that is, an interest in scientific things. His service to the Nutrition Laboratory we appreciate deeply. Some fifteen years ago I approached him regarding a series of physiological problems that we planned to investigate, and asked for his co-operation in securing a subject for some experiments. Not only did Mr. Hale immediately put us in touch with an ideal subject, but he never failed to maintain a keen interest in the outcome of these scientific studies. Where can one find a man with more or wider interests? Physiology bemoans his loss as well as art and literature.
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