USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 65
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Under his administration also the additional works of the firm at Stein- way in Long Island City were established, and the firm built a large public school, free circulating library, model free kindergarten, public baths and park, church and other conveniences for the benefit of their employees and other citizens of the place. Mr. William Steinway also remembered his native town of Seesen, to which he presented a beautiful park, which the inhabitants, by vote, named Steinway Park in his honor. He also established annual prizes there for three male and three female students, and paid tuition for the chil- dren of seventy-five families. His benefactions in behalf of education were very numerous, and he was at all times a liberal patron of many charitable organizations.
Mr. Steinway and his eldest brother, C. F. Theodore Steinway, were in 1867 elected members of the Royal Prussian Academy of Fine Arts at Berlin, and in the same year Mr. William Steinway received from King Charles of Sweden the grand gold medal, with an autograph letter from Crown Prince Oscar, later King of Sweden. After having been appointed pianoforte manu- facturer to the Imperial Court of Germany, Mr. Steinway was received in audience by the Emperor, William II, and the German Empress, in the Mar- ble Palace at Potsdam, and was presented by the Emperor with his portrait, which he autographed in his presence. The Emperor also sent him an auto- graph letter, thanking him for his gift to the Emperor William I Memorial
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
Church Building in Berlin, and June 13, 1893, the Emperor bestowed upon him the Order of the Red Eagle. Mr. Steinway was also, in April, 1894, elected a member of the Royal Italian Academy of St. Cecilia of Rome, founded by the great composer, Palestrina, in 1584.
Mr. Steinway was a leader in civic affairs, and a sincere worker for good government in city, State and Nation; was an active member of the Com- mittee of Seventy appointed by the citizens of New York to prosecute William R. Tweed and his associates. He was active in the movement which resulted in the election in 1886 of Abram S. Hewitt for Mayor of New York; was the New York member of the Democratic National Committee in 1888, and a dele- gate to the National Convention which, in the same year, gave Mr. Cleveland his second nomination for the Presidency. He was a member of the committee appointed in 1890 to endeavor to secure the World's Columbian Exposition for New York City, opening the list for a fund to secure the Fair with a sub- scription for $50,000, but when Congress gave the Fair to Chicago, he re- mained friendly to the Fair enterprise, and made and subsequently paid a sub- scription of $25,000 toward its success.
Mr. Steinway was one of the Democratic Presidential Electors elected for the State of New York in 1892, and in the following January was elected Presi- dent of the Electoral College at Albany, when it met and cast the vote of the State of New York for Grover Cleveland for President. He afterward declined several important Federal offices offered him by President Cleveland.
Mr. Steinway is best remembered, so far as public service is concerned, for his valuable work in the promotion of rapid transit for the city of New York. He was a member of the Rapid Transit Commission for several terms, and to no one is more credit due for improvement in the conditions of interurban travel in the Greater City, his far-sighted view of the needs of the city, his optimism in regard to its future and his enthusiasm for its welfare resulting in a most favorable culmination to his efforts.
Mr. Steinway was honorary president of the great Musical Festival at Madison Square Garden, New York City, June 24-28, 1894, making the opening address. He was a ready and forceful speaker, both in English and German, and was frequently the presiding officer of meetings of importance.
He was an officer and director of several banking and railway corpora- tions, and was a business man of great prestige and influence. In a social way he was twelve terms President of the Liederkranz Society; was an honorary member of the Arion Society, a member of the Manhattan Club, American Geographical Society, and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.
Mr. Steinway was twice married, and had five children: George A. Stein- way, Paula, wife of Louis von Bernuth, William R., Theodore E., and Maud S. Steinway.
CHARLES HERMAN STEINWAY
741
CHARLES HERMAN STEINWAY
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
I N the active management of the Steinway house there are still six
men of the Steinway blood, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Henry Engelhard Steinway, and Charles Herman Steinway is president, and head of the financial department in the corporation of Steinway & Sons.
His father, Charles Steinway, who was the second son of Henry Engel- hard Steinway, married Sophie Millenet, and of that marriage Mr. Charles H. Steinway is the second son, and was born in New York City, June 3, 1857. He was educated in excellent schools in the United States and Germany, and afterward entered the house of Steinway & Sons. His father, Charles Stein- way, had the financial management of the business during the formative period of its brilliant history until his death in 1865, and when the son entered the business, while it was under the executive direction of his uncle, William Stein- way, he soon demonstrated the fact that he had inherited the financial abilities of his father, and became collaborator with William Steinway in the financial department of the business, becoming vice president of the corporation in 1878. Upon the death of Mr. William Steinway, in 1896, he succeeded him as president and head of the financial department of Steinway & Sons, in which capacity he continues.
Under his administration the house has maintained and more strongly emphasized its leadership in the piano industry, and Mr. Steinway, as its head, has, like his distinguished predecessor, been the recipient of many honors, including the decoration of the Order of the Liakat from the Sultan of Tur- key, that of Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur of France, of Commander of the Order of the Lion and the Sun, by the Shah of Persia, the Order of the Red Eagle by William II, King of Prussia and German Emperor.
Mr. Steinway is a trustee of the Citizens Savings Bank and director of the Pacific Bank, is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and of the National Manufacturers' Association, and has gained recognition as one of the most representative business men and financiers of the country.
Outside of business affairs Mr. Steinway is well known as an accom- plished pianist and as the composer of several highly meritorious musical compositions. This gift makes him thoroughly appreciative of the artistic side of the business of Steinway & Sons, whose pianos have from the first represented the highest musical excellence as well as the most perfect mechan- ical achievements in the art of piano-making.
He married, in New York City, October 10, 1885, Marie Anna Mertens, and they have two children, Charles F. M. Steinway, born in 1892, and Marie Louise Steinway, born in 1894. Mr. Steinway is a member of the Academy of Stockholm, Sweden, of the Liederkranz Society of New York, German Society of New York, the Larchmont Yacht Club, Manhattan Club, and New York Athletic Club, and the Chicago Athletic Association.
743
CHARLES SOOYSMITH
C HARLES SOOYSMITH, one of the best known civil engineers in the country, son of the eminent engineer General William Sooy Smith, graduated in 1876, at the age of twenty, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, afterwards studying in Germany two years. In 1879 he was assist- ant superintendent of maintenance of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railway. In 1881 he joined his father in the firm of William Sooy Smith & Son, engineers and contrac- tors. Six years later he organized and became presi- dent of Sooysmith & Com- pany, constructing engi- neers. During the succeed- ing ten years this company constructed many important works, including founda- tions for large bridges: two over the Mississippi, four over the Missouri, two over the Ohio, central bridge over the Harlem. This company was the leading contractor in the field of difficult under-water engi- neering and all its work was carried out with a speed and integrity that made the company celebrated. Mr. Sooysmith introduced into this country the freezing process for making excava- tions, and he first used the pneumatic caisson method for foundations for large buildings as now so exten- CHARLES SOOYSMITH sively applied. Since 1898 he has been consulting engineer; among other important engagements served the Belmont-McDonald interests in inaugurating the construction of the New York Subway. His office is at 71 Broadway. He is now a Metropolitan Sewerage Commissioner.
His clubs are the Century, University, Midday, Riding, New York Yacht, and others.
744
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
JOHN CLAFLIN
745
JOHN CLAFLIN
J OHN CLAFLIN, president of The H. B. Claflin Company, was born in Brooklyn, N. Y., July 24, 1850, being the son of the late Horace Brigham Claflin and of Agnes, daughter of Calvin Sanger. He is descended on both sides from old New England families, his first American ancestor in the paternal line having been Robert (Mac) Claflin, who settled in Wenham, Essex County, Massachusetts, before 1661. He built a house in Wenham which he sold to the town for a parsonage about 1661; and a portion of this house is still standing. In the maternal line he is descended from Richard Sanger, who arrived in Boston in the ship Confidence, in 1638. His great- grandfather, Samuel Sanger, was a member of the Committee of Public Safety in 1777, while his great-great-grandfather, Richard Sanger, was a member of the Second Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1775. His grandfather, John Claflin, was a large landowner and the owner of the principal store and many other buildings in Milford, Massachusetts, and his father, Horace Brig- ham Claflin, who was born in Milford, Massachusetts, December II, 18II, was the foremost merchant of his day, in this country. As a citizen he was distin- guished for his strong convictions on the slavery question and his powerful aid to the cause of human freedom, for his political independence, and for the support he gave to religious and benevolent causes in Brooklyn, where he had his winter home for many years.
Horace B. Claflin began his business career as a clerk in his father's store in Milford, and with his brother and a brother-in-law succeeded to that busi- ness in 1831. They opened a branch dry goods store in Worcester in 1832, and after conducting that business for eleven years Mr. Horace B. Claflin came to New York in 1843 and inaugurated the business which, within twenty years thereafter, under the name of H. B. Claflin & Company, became the largest of its class in the world.
The success of that enterprise was a monument to the genius of Horace B. Claflin as a merchant, and the business of the firm was so efficiently organ- ized that its precedence in the dry goods trade has continued ever since.
Mr. John Claflin received a liberal education, was graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1869, and traveled in Europe for a year thereafter. In October, 1870, he entered the wholesale house of H. B. Claflin & Company, in which he became a partner in 1873, and succeeded as head of the house upon the death of his father in 1885. In the later years of his father's life the executive burden of the business was borne by the son, so that the decease of his father left him fully equipped for the direction of the affairs of the house.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, in his memorial sermon concerning his friend and faithful coworker, Horace B. Claflin, said, with reference to the condition in which the great business he had built up was left at his death: "His busi-
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
ness was so organized that it could go on, as it were, of itself. He had a son upon whom he leaned, upon whom has come the duty and the place, and whom he might justly trust. So his heart was largely set at rest in regard to the future."
The confidence which the famous preacher expressed, as to the ability of the son to carry on the great business the father had established, has been fully justified by the career of Mr. John Claflin in the twenty-five years since the words quoted were uttered. He incorporated the business in June, 1890, as The H. B. Claflin Company, of which he has been president ever since, and the house has for forty years been by far the largest wholesale dry goods busi- ness in New York City.
In 1900 Mr. Claflin formed The Associated Merchants' Company, and in July, 1909, the United Dry Goods Companies, Mr. Claflin becoming the president of both corporations, which control, by ownership of a majority of the stocks, The H. B. Claflin Company, The O'Neill-Adams and the James Mc- Creery & Company stores in New York City, and leading stores in Buffalo, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Louisville and other cities.
Mr. Claflin, in addition to his commanding interest in the dry goods trade, is a trustee and director in many of the leading financial and charitable insti- tutions of the country.
He finds his recreation in travel and outdoor life, avoiding the beaten paths and the fashionable watering-places as vacation resorts, but preferring to spend his leisure in the Rocky Mountains or some other place of natural beauty and freedom.
An especially notable journey was made by him in 1877; when Mr. Claflin, with a single companion, entered South America on the Pacific side, landing on the Peruvian Coast at about ten degrees, south latitude, and made his way across the Andean range, thence to the Madeira River, and from there to the mouth of the Amazon, on the Atlantic Coast. The route was one which had probably seldom, if ever, been traversed in its entirety, by a white man before that time, and much of it was in the range of savage tribes whose proximity added to the dangers of the itinerary. Part of the way afoot, part of it on mule-back, and the remainder by canoe, the journey was one of excitement, and full of novel experiences.
Mr. Claflin is in his political views a Republican, but independent; and his religious affiliations are with the Unitarian, Congregational and Episcopal churches.
He married, June 27, 1890, Elizabeth Stewart Dunn, granddaughter of James Stewart, of Louisville, one of the founders of the Bank of Kentucky, and widow of William S. Dunn, a former member of the firm of H. B. Claflin & Company.
LOUIS F. DOMMERICH
247
L OUIS F. DOMMERICH, long a leader in the dry goods trade of New York, was born February 2, 1841, in Cassel, Germany, where his father was a teacher, a writer of geographical books, and a maker of maps. Mr. Dommerich was educated in the schools of his native place, and served a mercantile apprenticeship in Germany, so that when he emigrated to the United States, he brought with him the advantage of a thorough business prepa- ration.
He arrived in New York in February, 1859, and at once entered the import- ing house of Noell & Oel- bermann, in the dry goods trade. After ten years of efficient service in that house, he became a partner, and later on became sole owner of the business, the style changing to L. F. Dommerich & Company, who conduct a strictly com- mission and banking busi- ness, which he has made continuously successful by sound and conservative bus- iness methods.
He is also a director in the German-American In- surance Company, the Han- over Fire Insurance Com- pany, the Citizens Central Bank, and the New York Life Insurance Company. His office is at 57 Greene Street.
LOUIS F. DOMMERICH
Mr. Dommerich is a member of the Union League Club, the Merchants' Club, Lawyers' Club, and German Club. He has a city residence at 314 West Seventy-fifth Street, and a country home at Maitland, Florida.
He has been twice married and has three sons: Otto L. and Alexander L., both married, and Louis W. Dommerich; and also has a daughter, Paula, who is married to R. Siedenburg, Jr.
748
HISTORY OF NEW YORK
CLARENCE WHITMAN
749
CLARENCE WHITMAN
C LARENCE WHITMAN, who has long been one of the leaders in the dry goods commission trade of New York, is a native of Annap- olis, Nova Scotia, the son of John and Rebecca ( Cutler ) Whitman. The Whit- man family is of English origin, descended from John Whitman, of Wey- mouth, Massachusetts, who came from England about 1625, among whose descendants have been many men of business and professional prominence.
Mr. Clarence Whitman was educated in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and since leaving school his entire business life has been in connection with the dry goods interest, first in Boston and afterward in New York City. He began as an employee of J. C. Howe & Company for a short time, and was then with the firm of James M. Beebe & Company, of Boston, until 1866.
In that year he came to New York and for nine years was in the service of J. S. & E. Wright & Company, dry goods commission merchants, which was later succeeded by the firm of Wright, Bliss & Fabyan.
During these years of activity in the dry goods business Mr. Whitman had not only been learning the business methods and trade usages, and gain- ing a thorough knowledge of fabrics, but he had also become an earnest in- vestigator into trade conditions, hoping to formulate plans for his own mer- cantile career which would open up for him a practically new field of business enterprise. He had made patriotic appraisal of the capabilities and possibili- ties of achievement of American industry, and he had been face to face with daily demonstrations of the fact that at that time there were many varieties of cotton goods largely used, but not made, in America. He was particularly impressed with the fact that the fine fabrics known to the trade as white goods were all imported from Manchester, England, or from Continental European markets.
He had broached the subject to his business associates and others in the trade, but they had assured him that it was not possible to make such goods in this country. The mills, he was told, were not equipped for such work; there were no operatives who knew anything about making such fine fabrics; the climate was unsuitable, and many other reasons supposed to form a per- petual bar to American enterprises along this line.
Mr. Whitman was not convinced by the arguments launched against his theory and determined to give it a thorough trial. With his brother he estab- lished the firm of E. C. & C. Whitman in the dry goods commission business, securing several good mill connections. Getting the selling agency of the Ponemah Mills, it was set to work as the pioneer manufacturer of white goods in this country. When Mr. Whitman tried to market the first products of the mill the jobbers advanced the same arguments that had been made before the attempt had been begun, and prophesied that he would never make a suc- cess of the white goods industry in this country.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
To a man of Mr. Whitman's temperament such a prediction only acted as an additional spur to his determination. He persisted, and won. Soon two or three of the larger dealers were trying to contract for his entire white goods output, but he declined, feeling assured that the demand would grow. He secured control of the product of other mills, which were set to work on white goods, with the result, due to his bold pioneer endeavors, that the white goods industry is firmly planted in this country and the imported supply forms an insignificant proportion of that trade. Mr. Whitman's firm, now Clar- ence Whitman & Company, of which he is the head, is still the leading house in the white goods trade, handling the output of its own and other mills.
The same reasoning which Mr. Whitman has applied to the naturaliza- tion of the white goods industry in the United States he has applied, with similar results, to other lines of production and trade. This is particularly true of the lace curtain industry, which was first established in this country through his initiative. He could see no reason why the United States should be entirely dependent on the English mills at Nottingham for these goods. He established the Wilkes-Barre Lace Manufacturing Company, and was soon offering lace curtains made there which were as good as any of Nottingham make. His house still sells the product of that and other lace factories since established in this country, and imported Nottingham lace curtains are now scarcely a factor in the dry goods trade in this country. The Stevens Manu- facturing Company, manufacturing bedspreads, represents an industry, the selling agency of which is held by this house, and which while not a pioneer in that line, has carried it to a higher plane in the quality of its products than had before been attempted in this country.
Mr. Whitman's achievements along these pioneer paths have contributed in a most valuable degree to the advancement of American industry and com- merce. Besides these specialties, his house is selling agent for other impor- tant mills, especially for the finer grades of printed cottons, and he has been with many business activities. He organized and is vice president and a di- rector of the Pantasote Leather Company, of Passaic, New Jersey, and is a director of the Credit Clearing House. He takes an active interest in meas- ures for the improvement of trade relations, and was for five years presi- dent of the Merchants' Association of New York.
He is a Republican, though his activities are only in small degree politi- cal; is a member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, the Union League, Metropolitan Riding and Merchants' Clubs, and of the New England Society.
He married, at Andover, Massachusetts, December 1, 1875, Mary Hop- pin Morton, daughter of the late Chief Justice Morton, of Massachusetts, and they have four children : Clarence Morton, Harold Cutler, Esmonde, and Ger- ald. The family home is at Katonah, Westchester County, New York.
251
HENRY ELMER GIBB
H ENRY ELMER GIBB, president of Mills & Gibb, was born in Brooklyn, April 4, 1861, being a son of John Gibb and Harriet Balsdon Gibb.
Mr. Gibb became connected, in 1878, with the house of Mills & Gibb, which had been founded by his father and Philo L. Mills, in 1865. They are importers and manufacturers of the various specialties in which they lead: laces, embroideries, white goods, linens, hand- kerchiefs, ribbons, veil- ings, notions, curtains, kid and fabric gloves.
The business was incorporated in Decem- ber, 1899, John Gibb becoming president, Philo L. Mills, vice president. Mr. Mills died in England, August 23, 1905, and Mr. John Gibb four days later at Islip, Long Island. The executive officers now are H. Elmer Gibb, president, Lewis M. Gibb, vice president, William T. Evans, secretary-treas- urer, and William Roescher, Nottingham, England, assistant secre- tary-treasurer.
The business, located at Broadway and Grand Street for thirty years will remove, in December, to the northwest corner of Fourth HENRY ELMER GIBB Avenue and Twenty-second Street, where Mills & Gibb are erecting for their exclusive occupancy a mag- nificent fourteen-story building with basement and sub-basement, where their continued leadership is assured. They have branch offices in the principal American cities and European manufacturing centres.
Mr. H. Elmer Gibb is recognized as a representative figure in the dry goods trade of New York. His home is at Morristown, New Jersey.
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
JAMES HARPER POOR
753
JAMES HARPER POOR
J AMES HARPER POOR, who has been for many years one of the most prominent of those engaged in the dry goods commission busi- ness in New York City, is a native of Boston, Massachusetts, where he was born December 17, 1862, the son of Edward Erie and Mary (Lane) Poor; is a descendant of an old New England family of English origin through John Poor, who came from Wiltshire, England, in 1635, and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts. He afterward received a grant of land in the town of Row- ley, Massachusetts, and died on the homestead there, in 1684. He was the ancestor of many prominent and successful people, among whom was in the sixth generation, Benjamin Poor, a prominent Boston merchant, who mar- ried, in 1824, Aroline Peabody, of Salem, Massachusetts. The Peabody family is one of the most prominent of the old "Massachusetts families, descendants from Lieutenant Francis Peabody, of Saint Albans, Herts, Eng- land, who came to America about 1635, and became a large landowner in Massachusetts. Benjamin Poor's son, Edward Erie Poor, father of James Harper Poor, became a distinguished business man, first in Boston, and after- ward in New York, where he was for many years of the dry goods com - mission firm of Denny, Poor & Company, and president of the National Park Bank of New York.
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