The Short Happy Life of Norman F. Wells: a Mount Vernon Story, Part I

M. Knoedler & Co.
14 East 57th Street, 1900 

 

Like many commuters, Norman Wells traveled by train between the suburbs and the city for nearly 50 years. It was just a half-hour ride from his hometown, Mount Vernon, N.Y., to Manhattan.

On Valentine’s Day, 1939, he left work on East 57^th Street and walked over to Grand Central Terminal, probably stopping to pick up a box of chocolates or a bouquet of flowers for his wife Mathilde.

On the train, he suffered a heart attack and died. He was just 65.  

At the time of his death, Norman Freeman Wells had achieved success that far exceeded his family’s expectations.  

He and his wife Mathilde lived in a large stucco house on the fancier side of town. Their home was filled with art, and the couple traveled extensively.  

Walter Wells, Norman’s father, descended from early English settlers. He had been a carpenter since boyhood. In the 1890s, he started building pedestals and managing display equipment at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1897, Norman began his career at M. Knoedler & Co., art dealers with an impeccable reputation, specializing in Old Master prints and post-Impressionist art.    

It’s not clear how Norman found his way to the gallery. He had no formal education in the field and must have been a quick study because he rose swiftly in the organization.

During the late nineteenth century, however, such a trajectory occurred more often than one might expect. As the antiquarian art market became increasingly competitive, enterprising young men sought entry-level jobs at shops and bookstores that dealt in maps, prints, and engravings.

Some started off sweeping floors. Those who prospered might eventually take over the store or go out on their own.

Originally, M. Knoedler & Co. was part of Goupil, Vibert & Cie, a Paris auction house that established a New York branch in 1848.* The branch’s founder, Michael Knoedler, eventually bought out Goupil. He left the gallery to his son Roland, who hired Norman as a clerk and promoted him quickly.

Knoedler advertisement, 1905

In 1908, when Norman married a Mount Vernon girl, Mathilde Kelly, one of the Knoedler sons attended the wedding and the firm gave the couple a piano and music cabinet for their new home, a small frame house on N. High Street set on a corner lot with a stone barn.  

Most of their years would be spent there, on the city’s west side, a largely German and Irish enclave. The neighborhood was their comfort.

Mount Vernon, N.Y., 1900s

 

Every summer, the Mount Vernon papers published an announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Norman F. Wells had sailed to Europe, where they would spend two months touring and Mr. Wells would conduct business. 

Norman learned well from an older colleague, Charles Carstairs, who worked closely with such high-end art collectors as the industrialist Henry C. Frick and the financier J. P. Morgan, Sr. When Carstairs was sent off to establish Knoedler’s Pittsburgh branch and subsequently moved to London to direct that branch, he left room for Norman to flourish.

The younger man developed a friendship with Herbert Greer French, a vice president at Proctor & Gamble, whom he advised on purchases of Old Masters prints. Eventually, this multitude formed the core of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s fine prints collection.  

At the time of his death, Norman was Knoedler’s secretary-treasurer. Many an artist inscribed and presented prints to him, which must have brought him great happiness.

What was his true passion, however?

Knoedler Annual Dinner, 1907;
Wells is among those standing.

 

 

To be continued.

*Dates vary. In 1863, the business officially became M. Knoedler & Co. 

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/

 

Our Public Library

Mount Vernon (N.Y.) Public Library, 1930s

Growing up in the 1960s, my brother and I visited the public library nearly every week. Sliding around the back seat of the car, pre-seat belt, we traveled across the city along streets named for great men like Lincoln.  My mother drove.

We always perked up when the car merged into a traffic circle with a Spanish-American War monument at its center.  That war lay in the deep unknown past.  But the various enterprises surrounding the circle were intensely familiar.  Coming first into view, a Congregational church with bright red doors.

"The Circle" -- 1980s

Farther round the circle was the Artuso Pastry Shop, famous for its cannoli.  And then there was Chicken Delight.

“Don’t cook tonight, call Chicken Delight!” according to the radio jingle, which our mother never heeded.

Oh, how we longed for Chicken Delight, fried or barbecued, delivery or 15-minute pickup.  No pots or pans – “just open and eat!”

Too bad.  On to the library.

Mount Vernon Public Library, 1920s

Founded in 1904 with a gift from the industrialist and philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, the library was located on the south side of the city in a neighborhood that had declined as de facto segregation set in.

At the time of Carnegie’s gift, grand houses and spreading elms lined the blocks that would surround the library.  Nearby, commerce bustled along “the Avenue,” as residents called it. 

A small African-American community also flourished on this side of town.  However, by the end of World War II the black population had multiplied and many middle and upper class white residents of the south side had moved across the railroad tracks to the north side.

I’m sure some white people wanted to take the library with them.  But Grace Greene Baker would have opposed that idea.

Grace and her husband, Herbert, came out of small-town Ohio – a town called Bellevue, about 70 miles west of Cleveland.  She had already lived in several cities by the time she arrived at ours.  That was because Herbert was a rising executive in the printing business who previously held positions in St. Paul, Buffalo and other places.

Born in 1861, Grace became deeply interested in civic affairs while in her mid-30s.  She volunteered first with the National Consumers League, a reform organization co-founded by Jane Addams.  The group tackled the minimum wage, child labor laws, and other social problems.  By the time the Bakers landed in our suburb in 1900, it came naturally to Grace to commit herself as a public servant.  She plunged in while rearing four children.

What called to Grace Baker?  Two things: children’s welfare and the public library, both quintessential initiatives of the Progressive Era.  I imagine her steering a Model A along the Bronx River Parkway, on the way to address the county legislature about juvenile delinquency, newsboys and truancy. 

Eventually the public library would consume all of Grace’s time.  She served as board president for nearly 20 years and led a campaign for a much-needed addition to the building. 

As fiercely as the local paper editorialized against the addition, Grace fiercely explained its importance.  Just imagine the space – an expansive children’s department filled with light, plus large meeting rooms where members of the community could discuss issues and listen to lectures.  In the 1930s, however, persuading people to vote for a bigger library was like trying to get a new high school.  No one wanted to pay.

Finally, the bond referendum passed in 1936.

The 1936 addition 

Four years later, the city bestowed upon Grace its “Good Citizen” award.  On top of that, one of the paneled meeting rooms in the library addition was named the Grace Greene Baker Community Room.  

I now realize that this is where my father took me, in 1969, to hear a young woman named Anne Moody who had recently published a book called Coming of Age in Mississippi.  Anne Moody was a civil rights activist who worked with the NAACP, CORE and SNCC.  It made sense for her to speak in our city so riven by race.  The room was packed.

She started by reading the first paragraph of her book:

I’m still haunted by dreams of the time we lived on Mr. Carter’s plantation.  Lots of Negroes lived on his place.  Like Mama and Daddy they were all farmers.  We all lived in rotten two-room shacks.

Often statues and spaces memorialize people whose contributions to public life are modest to imperceptible.  But Grace Greene Baker absolutely deserved that room, and many years later so did Anne Moody.

Original dust jacket

*Grace Greene Baker died in 1949 and is buried in Bellevue, Ohio.  

**Anne Moody (1940-2015)

 
https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2018/08/our-public-library.html

Too Late for Kumiss

Downtown Mt. Vernon, 1920s
(Westchester County Historical Society)

During the winter of 1974, I was stricken with some sort of respiratory illness and stayed home from school for several days.

The timing proved excellent.  Joni Mitchell had released her iconic album, “Court and Spark,” on January 1^st of that year.  Now it was February, and I knew the record would be essential to my recuperation.

After everyone had dispersed to school and work, I got dressed immediately.  Although six inches of snow lay on the ground, my plan was to walk a few blocks to a street called Columbus Avenue, take the bus to downtown Mt. Vernon, and go to the Bee Hive Record Store.  (Its name came from a soda parlor that previously occupied the space.)

When the Bee Hive was still a soda parlor

By 10:30 I possessed the record and decided to stop at Clover Donuts, a coffee shop near the bus stop.  That’s where I ran into Mrs. Moskowitz.  She waved me over to the counter, pointing to an empty stool.  I sat down beside her and ordered a cup of tea.

She didn’t ask why I wasn’t in school.

That’s probably because Virginia (“Ginny”) McClellan Moskowitz had other things on her mind, like history.  In fact she was the city historian.  She knew everything related to Mt. Vernon’s past and present, as befitted a woman born and bred there.  Mrs. Moskowitz had grown up in a family of city fathers.  Her childhood and much of her adulthood were spent in a large Victorian house with three generations of McClellans.  After World War II, she married Dr. Eugene Moskowitz and they continued to live in the house.

Virginia McClellan (left column, fourth down)
 Mt. Vernon High School yearbook, 1933

During the early 1970s Mrs. Moskowitz became especially busy.  In advance of the U.S. Bicentennial, the federal government dispensed millions of dollars to support local history initiatives.  Mrs. Moskowitz would use her allotment to mount several exhibitions and organize the old stuff that was pouring in.  She needed a lot of help.  The previous summer I had volunteered in her fiefdom, the Local History Room. 

In that room, the wooden file cabinets were packed with papers, the tables piled with maps and photographs, and the display cases filled with medals, plaques, and old silver.  Mrs. Moskowitz definitely had a plan, though.  She was working on it.

And now here we were in Clover Donuts. 

“Nice to see you,” she said cheerfully.

I explained about being sick and the unfortunate situation of having to run an errand in such bad weather.  I didn’t mention Joni Mitchell.

Mrs. Moskowitz leaned close and said with a smile:  “You could probably use some cumis.”  That’s how I imagined the word, based on her pronunciation.  But no.  

“K-U-M-Y-S-S,” she spelled enthusiastically, then added:  “Unfortunately, you’re about 50 years too late!”  

Indeed, I was very late for Kumyss, a sparkling milk drink popularized by Mount Vernon’s first mayor, Dr. Edward F. Brush, as a cure for asthma, chest colds, indigestion, tuberculosis, malnutrition, and anything else that ailed anyone anywhere.  It was a classic nineteenth century patent medicine. 

Kumyss is made by fermenting unpasteurized cow’s milk.  The addition of yeast and sugar makes the drink fizzy and slightly alcoholic.  According to Dr. Brush, the healing powers of Kumyss were known to Homer, the nomadic tribes of Russia and Asia, Marco Polo, the Crim Tartars and the Uzbeks.

 Advertisement for Kumyss, circa World War I

Dr. Brush became interested in Kumyss during the 1870s and published a book called Kumyss or Russian Milk Wine.  Subsequently he began to promote the drink, created a market, and built a Kumyss factory in Mt. Vernon.  The sales made him a millionaire.  Meanwhile, he continued to practice medicine, specializing in pulmonary diseases.

However, he also loved being mayor and was reelected on the Republican ticket twice after an abbreviated first term, 1892-4.   

The rage for Kumyss ran through World War I, then started to decline.

But Mrs. Moskowitz kept the story alive.  And she found the perfect moment to tell it.  I can still hear her chatting about Dr. Brush while we drank our tea in Clover Donuts.  The windows were fogged, the sidewalks needed salt, and the twentieth century marched on, looking for a new cure.  

Mayor Edward F. Brush, early twentieth century

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2018/03/too-late-for-kumyss.html

 
 

Of Time and the Blizzard

Snowy day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The day before my father died last March, I moved in close to his right ear and asked him a few questions. 

“Do you remember Primrose Avenue?” I said.

That’s the name of a street near the house where we lived when my brother and I were growing up in Mt. Vernon, N. Y. 

Primroses are small colorful old-fashioned flowers. Primrose the street was pretty, too. It began in a vale (an appropriately antiquated word) near the business district, then meandered along, past a small park with lilac bushes and a few benches.  As it climbed a hill, the street widened with grand houses on either side, some with marble steps at the curb.  These had been used for carriages in the 1890s.  

Primrose Avenue postcard, around 1905

Now it is 2018 and a big storm has swirled into New York City.  Down on the street, you can hear the snow crashing into the wind.  I remember this sound from my childhood when snowstorms occurred routinely from November to March.  We trudged to school through banks, drifts and slush.  Sometimes the driving snow stung our eyes.

During the winter of 1970, a blizzard socked the New York metropolitan area. It lasted a few days.  I can still conjure that wonderful sense of being stuck inside.  Even if one had an appointment, it would be impossible to get there.  Everything was closed; only our homes were open for business. 

One night, the snow finally stopped.  Looking out the window, we saw a few flakes trickling down.  My father and I decided to take a walk.  In boots and layers of sweaters coats scarves hats gloves, we stepped outside.

We started around the block and came to Primrose Avenue.  The last foot of snow had not been plowed and we couldn’t find the sidewalk, so we walked up the middle of the street. 

I remember a pink glow, which must have been the snow reflecting the streetlight.  Also the crunch, crunch of our boots.  I also recall, dimly, our conversation.

My father reading to me (left) and my brother (right), early 1960s

My father was a talented writer and editor who worked largely with dry bureaucratic prose.  At heart, though, he had a true literary sensibility.  Because of him, there were volumes of Whitman, Dylan Thomas, Housman, and Keats in the house; also such novels as The Naked and the Dead, Of Human Bondage, and Johnny Got His Gun.  My mother recommended King’s Row and anything by John O’Hara, but he urged on me Lolita and You Can’t Go Home Again.

After his death, I found notes for the book reviews that he wrote during his years as a newspaper reporter.  It was a good way to make extra money and get free books. In 1947, for example, his reviews included All the King's Men and a thriller called The Big Clock.

Who knows why he also was reviewing Boswell’s Life of Johnson (published in 1791), but of it he noted simply: “Had to choke this one down.”

Back to Primrose Avenue. 

As we walked through the pink light and dwindling snowflakes, he imparted something magical to me.  I believe it involved the exhilarating connection between literature and experience.  The scene, the shadow, the words and characters – you could always return to them, or call them up.  And of course, what he said turned out to be true.

That’s why I’m glad that New York is finally getting a snowstorm, this snowstorm, the first one since his death.  It feels like I’ve crossed a continent to get back to Primrose Avenue and he’s there with me, talking and walking in the unplowed world.

Throughout his life, my father jotted down the titles
and authors of books he wanted to read.

Met photo by Claudia Keenan

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2018/01/of-time-and-blizzard.html

The Wartburg Orphanage

Postcard of the Wartburg Orphanage, around 1914

A few weeks ago I read a crushing article, “The Lost Children of Tuam,” in the New York Times. 

The story concerns hundreds of unmarried Irish Catholic mothers who, during the mid-twentieth century, were exiled to the St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in County Galway. Inside the stone fortress, as one survivor described the home, the nuns subjected the mothers and their children to neglect and degradation.      

Then, after a year of abuse, the mothers were forced out into the world leaving their children behind.  Many of those children eventually died and were buried under gruesome circumstances, although some made it through.

When the neighborhood kids encountered the St. Mary’s children at the local school, they taunted them and called them “home babies.”

Although the circumstances are vastly different, the story reminded me of the Wartburg Orphanage in the city where I grew up, and how the students who lived there were known as the “Wartburg kids.”  That’s what we called them.  The teachers said it, too.  If pressed, a child might state in a very low voice, “I live at the Wartburg.”

 Late nineteenth-century view of the Wartburg Orphanage

We never visited the Wartburg.  Therefore, we didn’t know anything about what life was like there.  No one enlightened us, either, which made it even easier to imagine something unpleasant.  

There was an impassable line between the students who lived at the Wartburg and everyone else who attended our predominantly white elementary school.  Our city had a very strict social order most evident in the railroad cut that separated the South Side – largely black – and the North Side – largely white.  The Wartburg fit into that hierarchy. 

The founder of the orphanage, Rev. William Passavant, called it the Wartburg Orphan’s Farm School.  He started it after the Civil War for the children of dead soldiers.  For a while, elderly people lived there, too.  The reverend went on to establish several other orphan’s homes and spread the word of evangelical Lutheranism.   

He named the school after the medieval Wartburg Castle, located on a mountaintop in Thuringia in central Germany.

Passavant asked a businessman named Peter Moller to purchase 121 acres in Mount Vernon, N.Y., and to provide an endowment.  Moller, who liked to refer to himself as a Hanoverian immigrant (as opposed to German), was the eldest of several brothers who went into the sugar refining business in the 1850s.  He made his fortune as president of the American Sugar Refining Company.  Eventually he got embroiled in price-fixing but that was long after he gave Passavant the money.

George Charles Holls, first director of the
Wartburg Orphanage

To head the Wartburg, Passavant called on George Charles Holls, a German immigrant who had risen quickly in the ministry after he founded the first Lutheran orphan asylum in the U. S., in a Pennsylvania town that bore the inimitable name, Zelienople.   

After Holls retired in 1889, along came Gottlieb Cleopas Berkemeier, who presided over the Wartburg until his death in 1924. During World War I, Berkemeier became active in Friends of Peace, a pro-German group that lobbied against American involvement in the war, especially the prospect of a military alliance between the U.S. and the U.K.

The first American orphanages sprang up during the early 1800s in response to industrialization, which robbed children of their parents’ care.  Some orphanages were created to wrest control of children from their parents; this occurred especially among the families of Irish immigrants.

A social reformer named Charles Loring Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society in New York City in 1854, working initially with newsboys.  Reverend Brace also created the Orphans Train, which transported city children to the Midwest, Plains, and New England where they joined new families, mostly on farms.  Astonishingly, the Orphans Train relocated nearly 400,000 children.

Orphanages proliferated in the U. S. during the last third of the nineteenth century.  Some historians believe this reflected society’s deepening concern for the welfare of the needy, young and old.  All institutions were privately funded, and religious and ethnic groups looked out for their own.  

My great-grandmother, for example, lost her husband soon after emigrating from Russia to the U. S. with two young children.  She placed them in a Hebrew Asylum for one year until she got back on her feet.

There were a few orphanages for African-American children.  The Colored Orphan Asylum in New York City operated between 1836 and 1946. By and large, however, black children without parents were sent to jail or reform school.

As progressivism surged into the twentieth century, Americans became disenchanted with orphanages, which were thought to keep children dependent and in lock-step (not to mention concerns about abuse).  In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt convened a White House conference to address the care of dependent children.  Subsequently, the Federal Government created the Children’s Bureau, which had considerable latitude in overseeing foster homes, institutions, and medical care.   

In 1911, Illinois became the first state to authorize mother’s pensions for families without male breadwinners.  It was thought that the pensions would minimize the need for orphanages.  By 1919, 39 states had followed suit.  Eventually the program was folded into the New Deal, along with much of the work of the Children’s Bureau.

Through two world wars and the Depression, orphanages were filled to capacity.  During those years, the Wartburg drew widespread praise as a model institution. 

In 1964, its board decided that the children should attend the local public schools.  I’m certain that at least a few public school parents and administrators objected. After all, these were “Wartburg kids.” 

This still, from a 1938 documentary about the Wartburg Orphanage,
oddly evokes "The Sound of Music" thunderstorm scene. 

*In 1979, the Wartburg closed its doors.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2017/11/the-wartburg-orphanage.html