Bertha Honoré Palmer
Bertha Honoré Palmer (also Mrs. Potter Palmer), née Bertha Matilde Honoré (born May 22, 1849 in Louisville , Kentucky , † May 5, 1918 in Osprey ( Sarasota County ), Florida ) was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist and patron .
youth
Bertha Honoré came from a family of French immigrants. Her grandfather Jean Antoine Honoré operated the first steamship line between Louisville and New Orleans. Her father Henry Hamilton Honoré was a successful businessman in the real estate industry. When Bertha was six years old, the family moved to Chicago. After receiving expensive private tuition at first, she later attended school in Washington DC. She met her future husband at the age of 13 in her parents' home.
Potter Palmer
Potter Palmer (1826–1902) had settled in Chicago in 1852, coming from New York and established a successful haberdashery business with the company P. Palmer & Co. Dry Goods. In 1865, he began buying large-scale rundown buildings on State Street and built a new department store there. Other merchants followed suit and Potter Palmer was able to sell land for a profit. In the late 1860s he sold the department store to his business partner Marshall Field and focused on the real estate business.
Palmer House Hotel
The wedding of 21-year-old Bertha Honoré to 44-year-old Potter Palmer took place in 1870 and she received the Palmer House Hotel worth $ 3,500,000 as a wedding gift . After the hotel was completed in 1871, it fell victim to the Great Chicago Fire just 13 days later . Potter Palmer managed to build a new hotel in a very short time, for which he had to borrow the then enormous sum of $ 1.7 million, which up to that point was the largest amount of money ever lent to a private person in the USA. The couple first lived in a suite at the Palmer House Hotel before moving to Lake Shore Drive in 1885. Today the hotel belongs to the Hilton group .
Palmer Castle
According to today's value (2003), the Palmer Castle, which costs around $ 18 million, was built in the castle-like neo -Gothic style on a floor area of 73 × 51 meters according to plans by the architect Henry Ives Cobb. The octagonal entrance hall was six meters high and had a marble mosaic floor. Tapestry carpets hung from the tropical wood clad walls. While the music room was decorated in the Spanish style, there were other salons in the French, Turkish, Greek and Japanese styles. The English-style dining room could seat 50 people. There was also a two-storey picture gallery and one of the first elevators. The Palmer Castle was the first building on the so-called Gold Coast (Gold Coast), which became the preferred residential area of the wealthy citizens of Chicago.
Chicago Woman's Club
Bertha Honoré Palmer was one of the first members of the Chicago Woman's Club. Both upper class and working class women belonged to this club to discuss social issues. They promoted the new idea of kindergartens until the city established them as part of the school system. They also introduced inexpensive milk for children of the lower classes and looked after the children of imprisoned mothers.
Chicago's World's Fair 1893
This world exposition was held to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus and was intended to improve Chicago's dingy image as the nation's slaughterhouse . Bertha Honoré Palmer was elected chairman of the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian Exposition as early as 1891 . This committee was originally intended as a voluntary body, but Bertha Honoré Palmer used her influence to raise awareness of the achievements of women during the exhibition. There was a large Woman's Building and there were exhibitions on women's issues in every pavilion in each US state. At the opening of the Woman's Building she spoke the words: “Freedom and justice for all are infinitely more to be desired than pedestals for a few.” (For example: freedom and justice for all are a greater desire than monuments for a few). She was the center of Chicago society and received President McKinley as well as numerous members of European royalty, which earned her the title of Queen of Chicago . In her honor, a portrait of her by the painter Anders Zorn was hung in the Women's Building .
Impressionists
Immediately after her appointment as Chair of the Board of Lady Managers, Bertha Honoré Palmer traveled to Europe to promote the importance of the World's Fair. This is where her passion for Impressionist painting began and she got to know Claude Monet personally. She was advised on her purchases by the American painter Mary Cassatt , who also played a key role in building up the Havemeyer Collection . When she returned to Chicago, she had numerous paintings with her, 29 by Monet alone and eleven by Pierre-Auguste Renoir . She was one of the first American collectors to acquire Impressionist paintings at a time when even European museums did not want to show these pictures. It is also thanks to Bertha Honoré Palmer that these modern painters were shown in the art pavilion of the world exhibition and became known to a wide audience. She later bequeathed part of her extensive collection to the Art Institute of Chicago , where they form the core of the extensive Impressionist collection.
social commitment
Bertha Honoré Palmer helped women hatters form a union and organized a strike. She invited employers and employee representatives to a conference in her house and was involved in hospitals and poor houses. Her palatial residence was the setting for charity balls, of which she is considered to be the earliest initiator.
widow
After her husband's death in 1902, she often stayed in Paris and London, where she had her own apartments. She was a close friend of Edward VII and the newspapers spread numerous rumors that the 54-year-old would marry again. The named candidates included the Earl of Munster, the Duke of Atholl, Prince Albert I of Monaco and King Peter I of Serbia . However, all of these rumors turned out to be unfounded and she did not remarry. She traveled a lot and took part in the RMS Lusitania's maiden voyage with her son Potter in September 1907 .
Florida
In 1910 Bertha Honoré Palmer read an advertisement in the Chicago Sunday Tribune that land was for sale in Sarasota , Florida . The idea of being able to spend the winter in Florida's mild climate prompted her to purchase tens of thousands of hectares of land in and around Sarasota until she owned about a third of the district. In addition to a house in Osprey, she also built a model farm and bought 1,000 cows. This farm was later donated to the Myakka River State Park . She was one of the first people to spend the winter in Florida, which is still imitated by many retirees to this day.
Final considerations
When Bertha Honoré Palmer died in her Osprey Point home in 1918, she had more than doubled her husband's fortune. In addition to her collection of paintings, which went to the Art Institute of Chicago, she provided numerous social institutions with financial means. Her sons Honore and Potter Palmer, Jr. inherited the remaining fortune. Their country estate, Osprey Point, with its large parks, was donated by the family to the Gulf Coast Heritage Association in 1980. Her life as an independent woman was exemplary for many contemporaries and her commitment to women's rights came from an early stage. Her role in promoting Chicago culture and beyond was instrumental in her time. Her grave memorial is in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.
Potter Palmer Collection
Edouard Manet: Calm seas off Boulogne
Pierre Auguste Renoir: At the Fernando Circus
Claude Monet: Bordighera
Camille Pissarro: Place du Havre, Paris
literature
- Aline Bernstein Louchheim Saarinen: The Proud Possessors: the lives, times and tastes of some adventurous American art collectors . Random House, New York 1958.
- Ishbel Ross: Silhouette in Diamonds . Harper and Brothers Publishers, New York 1960.
- Frederick A. Sweet: Great Chicago Collectors . In: Apollo Magazine , September 1966.
- Patricia Erens: Masterpieces . Chicago Review Press, Chicago 1979, ISBN 0-914090-75-5 .
- Anne Distel: Les collectionneurs des impressionnistes, Amateurs et marchands . La Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-85047-042-2 .
- Susanna de Vries-Evans: The Lost Impressionists . Roberts Rinehart Publishers, 1992, ISBN 1-879373-25-4 .
Web links
- Bertha Honoré Palmer role during the 1893 World's Fair (English)
- Bertha Honoré Palmer grave monument (English)
- The Palmer House Hotel (English)
- Bertha Honoré Palmer in Sarasota (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Palmer, Bertha Honoré |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Potter Palmer, Bertha |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and patron |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 22, 1849 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Louisville , Kentucky |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 5, 1918 |
| Place of death | Osprey , Florida |