Henry Gaylord Wilshire

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Henry Gaylord Wilshire (1861–1927), around 1908

Henry Gaylord Wilshire [ ˈhɛnɹi ˈɡeɪlɔɹd ˈwilʃəɻ ] ( listening ? / I , first name Gaylord , therefore also H. Gaylord or without the first name; * June 7, 1861 in Cincinnati ; † September 7, 1927 in Los Angeles ) was an American Big landowner , publisher and socialist . At his own initiative, one of the later central traffic axes in the Los Angeles agglomeration , Wilshire Boulevard , was named after him. In addition, Wilshire Avenue in Fullerton and Wilshire Drive in Phoenix now bear his name. Audio file / audio sample

Live and act

The Wilshire Blvd. with its high-rise buildings in the Westwood section (2009)

Wilshire came from a wealthy atheist family in the US state of Ohio and initially worked as a journalist and newspaper publisher. In the 1880s, he and his brother moved to San Francisco and tried to set up a company for safes there, but failed.

In 1895 he acquired several barley fields in what is now the greater Los Angeles area. The area was 140,000 m² and Wilshire wanted to sell this, divided into plots , for the building of houses at a profit. At the same time, he donated part of the area to connect the future development areas with a wide street to the city center to the city ​​council on the condition that the future boulevard should bear his name and not be used for the expansion of the railway . Wilshire's skepticism about the railroad is not justified in the biographical literature on himself. The Wilshire biographer and historian J. Eric Lynxwiler states in his publication on Wilshire Boulevard that Wilshire wanted the new street to be laid out as a boulevard, i.e. a particularly wide street, from the start, so that carriages were the usual means of transport at every point on it would have a correspondingly large turning circle . The Nevada Boulevard , which existed before 1895, was integrated into Wilshire Boulevard , which was repeatedly extended until the 1980s.

Regardless of his entrepreneurial activities, Wilshire was politically active and saw himself as a socialist . He saw no ideological contradiction in being big landowners and wealthy and at the same time getting involved in what was then the “ Socialist Labor Party of America ”. Wilshire wrote several papers on the idea and implementation of socialism in America.

Wilshire sought political offices outside of the United States, which was possible at the turn of the century and not linked to a specific citizenship . For example, he ran for the United States Congress in California in 1890 , for a seat in the British House of Commons in London in 1894 , for the Canadian Parliament in 1902 and again for Congress in New York City in 1904, and most recently in 1906 for the Los Angeles City Bike. Since Wilshire was never elected, he turned to his writing after the last defeat.

His wife Mary Mc Reynolds Wilshire (1880–1955) had studied with the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung in Europe and practiced from the 1930s, independently of her husband's business ventures. The couple had one son, Logan Gaylord Wilshire (1906–1970), who remained childless and never married. J. Eric Lynxwiler could not find any descendants of the Wilshire couple in the now dissolved Wilshire Archives under the direction of Dana Cuff at UCLA .

Gaylord Wilshire died penniless in New York City, where he was buried in an urn grave. Even if Wilshire did not succeed in lasting business success and actively shape politics, he is considered a pioneer of socialism in the USA.

Works (selection)

  • Henry Gaylord Wilshire, George Bernard Shaw (Eds.): Fabian Essays in Socialism . American edition. New York, 1889.
  • Gaylord Wilshire: The Why a Workingman Should Be a Socialist . Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1908.
  • Henry Gaylord Wilshire: Socialism Inevitable . Reprint, Wentworth Press, 2019. ISBN 9780469614567 .

Literature and Sources

Web links

Commons : Gaylord Wilshire  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry on Mary Mc Reynolds Wilshire on findagrave.com , accessed December 1, 2019.
  2. ↑ Entry on Logan Gaylord Wilshire on findagrave.com , accessed December 1, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Wilshire, Henry Gaylord
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American landowner, publisher, and socialist
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Cincinnati
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 1927
Place of death los Angeles