Monday, March 7, 2016

Glen View Club -- Focus on the First Quarter Century Part 2a: The Boy Scout Sculpture

Our post "Glen View Club -- Focus on the First Quarter Century Part I" is among the most frequently viewed here at Along the Gradyent. When published we promised Part 2, having in mind that would be a comprehensive post to complete the reporting on most everything else of interest in the club's first quarter century. A bit later I followed up with "Harms Woods, Glen View Club and the North Shore and Western Railway" which published photos of remnants of the abandoned early 20th century trolley line that ferried members, caddies and employees of the club from Evanston out to Golf, Illinois. 

There is much ground to cover in Part 2 including the fiery destruction of the original clubhouse, the 1921 construction of the new (and current) clubhouse, vignettes on notable early members, stories of the inaugural Western Open and an early US Amateur and US Open held at the club, and reports on major championship winning members and club professionals. 

After amassing a body of research I've decided to proceed with individual chapters -- much in the way that many books were serially published in the late 19th and into the turn of the 20th century.
While American periodicals first syndicated British writers, over time they drew from a growing base of domestic authors. The rise of the periodicals like Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly grew in symbiotic tandem with American literary talent. The magazines nurtured and provided an economic sustainability for writers, while the writers helped grow the periodicals' circulation base. During the late 19th century, those that were considered the best American writers first published their work in serial form and then only later in a completed volume format.[8]

As a piece in Scribner's Monthly explained in 1878, "Now it is the second or third rate novelist who cannot get publication in a magazine, and is obliged to publish in a volume, and it is in the magazine that the best novelist always appears first."[9] Among the American writers that wrote in serial form were Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Herman Melville. A large part of the appeal for writers at the time was the broad audiences that serialization could reach, which would then grow their following for published works.

One of the first significant American works to be released in serial format is Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which was published over a 40-week period by The National Era, an abolitionist periodical, starting with the June 5, 1851 issue.
I am not in league those writers but we have some interesting content to share -- so on with our Part 2a.

THE SCULPTOR

On July 4, 1919 Glen View Club welcomed to its grounds a notable piece of American art -- a rendering known as the Boy Scout sculpture (or fountain) by Andrew O'Connor Jr. (1874-1941). The statute was inserted and is located to this day in a sylvan setting between the clubhouse and the golf course pro shop. The sculptor, Mr. O'Connor, had been: 
Sculptor Andrew O'Connor
[b]orn in Worcester, Massachusetts, son of a sculptor of the same name of Irish descent. In London c.1894-8, met John Singer Sargent and assisted him on reliefs for the Boston Library decorations. On return to America, was commissioned through the sculptor Daniel Chester French to make bronze doors for St Bartholomew's church in New York. Settling in Paris in the early years of the 20th century, he exhibited annually at the Paris Salon where his work was influenced to some extent by Dalou and Rodin, then from 1914 to the mid 1920s in the USA, at Paxton, Massachusetts. First one-man exhibition at the Kunstsalon Walther Zimmermann, Munich, 1906. Received various commissions for funerary and public monuments mainly in the USA, including the monument to Lincoln at Springfield, Illinois, an equestrian statue of Lafayette at Baltimore and the Theodore Roosevelt memorial at Glen View, Chicago.

THE BENEFACTOR

The Boy Scout sculpture was commissioned and donated to Glen View Club by member Edwin S. Jackman (1865-1927). The artwork memorializes president Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) by honoring the late president's association with and contributions to the Boy Scout movement. 


The Boy Scout sculpture (1919) at Glen View Club. Golf, Illinois.

"YOUTH -- LIFE -- LIBERTY" are boldly inscripted thereon.


Edwin S. Jackman is best known for another artwork donation -- the Bear Fountain at Jackman Park in the neighboring village of Glenview. That statue, also by Andrew O'Connor, has become the village's trademark

Historic GlenviewEdwin Stanton Jackman

How Entrepreneur From Golf Left Mark On Growing Village

Posted: Wednesday, December 24, 2014 1:53 pm

When we look back at some of the generous contributions made to Glenview, one man’s name often is mentioned: Edwin Stanton Jackman.

It’s interesting to note that Jackman, a very wealthy entrepreneur man in the steel business, was not a resident of Glenview. He lived along the boundary of the village, in Golf.

His thoughtful contribution, a three-level fountain with a very popular bear, actually became the village’s trademark.
According to Bev Dawson, Glenview History Center librarian, Jackman was born in East Liverpool, OH in 1865 and had siblings. His family moved to Pennsylvania when Edwin was six.
“Edwin attended Western University, which is now the University of Pittsburgh,” Dawson said. “His first job was in a telegraph office in 1882.”
His abilities were quickly recognized and he was offered a job with Park Brothers and Company Limited. A very adept salesman, he became the agent for the Firth-Sterling steel company.
“He established his own company, E.S. Jackman and Company, with headquarters in Chicago, selling steel with a national scope,” Dawson said. “He did business from Pittsburgh to the Pacific coast.”
Dawson said Jackman’s brother, David, was the treasurer of the Pittsburgh office.
Jackman and his wife, Harriet, were childless, but the love and wisdom he would have provided his own children, he gave to his nephews. Dawson said that the Glenview History Center actually has Jackman’s letters to his nephews in its archives.
The Jackmans called their home “The Farm.” Perhaps this was because they both loved animals – wildlife and cocker spaniels.
As his fortune grew, Jackman wanted to give back to the local community.
“He donated the Bear Fountain to Glenview in 1917,” Dawson said. “At the pedestal (there) is all manner of wild animals. The fountain has three levels: the top for people, the trough for horses and the bottom for dogs and cats. The fountain because Glenview’s trademark.”
Two years later Jackman donated the bronze Boy Scout Fountain, which is on the grounds of the Glen View Club, a country club on Golf Road, between Harms and Waukegan. Andrew O’Connor created both sculptures.
Jackman died in 1927, at the age of 62, while on vacation in Santa Barbara, CA. His contributions have been admired for generations.
The bear statue symbolizes the generosity of the community.
Glenview is home to people who band together in a number of community groups and organizations to help their fellow citizens. Their philosophy “Hug the Bear” began in 1917 during the early stages of Glenview’s history when Ed Jackman bestowed upon the people a fountain with a bear at the top. The bear serves as the village’s mascot and since that time has stood for giving back to the community. To “Hug the Bear” means in an analogical sense to “hug” the community. The loyal and compassionate people of Glenview make a joint effort to continue the tradition established a century ago that has served them so well.
Jackman lived not in Glenview but at 57 Overlook Drive, Golf, Illinois on a parcel with a Holabird and Root (architects of the Glen View Club clubhouse) designed residence and stable -- a mere pitching wedge away from the 15th hole at Glen View Club. The Jackman home was replaced by new construction in 1997.


Iron Age, March 25, 1915.
Edwin S. Jackman was sales agent for the Firth Sterling Steel Company. He was proud to have "been selling steel to railroads since his twentieth birthday." Salesman to the core, Mr. Jackman celebrated his fiftieth birthday "with a tribute to American railroads and the men who run them." 
A railroad is not the unfeeling and relentless devourer of automobiles and little children at grade crossings described by impassioned advocates in crowded courtrooms. The whistle of danger is an engineer's use of a piece of machinery, but it is also the echo of a man's thought for his own babies left at home. 
A railroad has been likened to an octopus by those who do not know the flesh and blood and personality of railroads. The soul of a railroad is fidelity, and if a railroad is an octopus, it is an octopus with a soul. 
A railroad is a disciplined power; owning rails and cars and locomotives; engaging in the highest quality of a mechanical skill and expert knowledge; but the glory of a railroad is the united adjustment of its living nerves to patience, courage, courtesy, speed and safety.
The man emoted.

Firth Sterling manufactured steel tools and dies, and ammunition jackets and casings.



Firth Sterling once had a munitions plant in Washington DC, on the southern bank of the Anacostia River at its junction with the Potomac where Bolling Air Force Base (home of the presidential Marine One helicopter fleet) is now located.


Firth Sterling Steel plant, Washington, DC, Washington Times, May 12, 1907.
Note the artillery shells being turned on huge iron lathes in the middle and bottom photos in the Washington Times article. The steel company lives on in the form of its eponymous access road, Firth Sterling Avenue, which skirts the west campus of St. Elizabeths Hospital. St. Elizabeths houses John Hinckley who has been 34-years resident in the mental institution since being found not guilty of attempting to assassinate President Ronald Wilson Reagan by reason of insanity.

First Sterling was the first American stainless steel producer.

PRESIDENT TEDDY ROOSEVELT, BOY SCOUT SUPPORTER

Teddy Roosevelt surged into the national consciousness when he led the legendary "Rough Riders" United States Army cavalry regiment during the Spanish American war. Roosevelt's unit was decorated for its courageous fighting in winning the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898. Theodore Roosevelt was elected Vice President in 1900. He ascended to the presidency in September 1901 when President William McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt was elected to a full four-year term in 1904.

Roosevelt put his considerable weight behind the Boy Scouts of America when it was formed in 1910. He lauded the Boy Scouts for molding resourceful, kind and brave young men who could serve in support and defense of family, country and the cause of freedom, much like his Rough Riders.
Theodore Roosevelt and the BSA 
Theodore Roosevelt was a guiding figure in the early years of the Boy Scout Movement in the United States. A former president, proponent of training young men for service to their nation and their community, and proponent of the "strenuous life", Roosevelt thought that the Boy Scouts of America would answer the need for guiding boys to manhood. He was the first commissioner of the Nassau County Council, and was declared Chief Scout Citizen in 1911.
Roosevelt lauded the movement's virtues.
“More and more I have grown to believe in the Boy Scout movement. I regard it as one of the movements most full of promise for the future here in America. The Boy Scout movement is distinctly an asset to our country for the development of efficiency, virility, and good citizenship. It is essential that its leaders be men of strong, wholesome character; of unmistakable devotion to our country, its customs and ideals, as well as in soul and by law citizens thereof, whose wholehearted loyalty is given to this nation, and to this nation alone.”

Theodore Roosevelt with local Boy Scouts at Sagamore Hill, Long Island, circa 1910.
In December, 1913 Teddy Roosevelt wrote a pep talk for the Boy Scouts for publication in its house organ, Boys Life Magazine. He called on Scouts to be unselfish.
I wish to send this message, not only to the Boy Scouts, but to all the boys of America. The prime lesson that the Boy Scout movement is teaching is the lesson that manliness in its most vigorous form can be and ought to be accompanied by unselfish consideration for the rights and interests of others.
Indeed I go a little further. I wish that I could make the special appeal to the American boy to remember that unless he thinks of others he cannot fit himself to do the best work in any great emergency.

Roosevelt completed his message with a challenge to the scouts that surely would be marginalized and criticized in today's culture of political correctness.



What was true on a very small scale in my regiment is true on a very big scale of American citizenship as a whole. The boy is not worth anything if he is not efficient. I have no use for mollycoddles, I have no use for timid boys, for the "sissy" type of boy. I want to see a boy able to hold his own and ashamed to flinch. But as one element of this ability to hold his own, I wish to see him contemptuously indifferent to the mean or brutal boy who calls him "sissy" or a mollycoddle because he is clean and decent and considerate to others. If a boy is not fearless and energetic, he is a poor creature; but he is an even poorer creature if he is a bully of smaller boys or girls, if he is guilty of cruel mischief, and if in his own home, and especially in relationships with his own mother and sisters, he is selfish and unfeeling.

THE BOY SCOUT SCULPTURE:  THEN AND NOW

Glen View Club's Boy Scout sculpture was featured in the cover story of the March 25, 1920 Scouting Magazine.

Scouting Magazine, March 25, 1920.
The magazine reported Mr. Jackman's sculpture dedication speech. Jackman honored those who gave the ultimate sacrifice of life and limb to serve the cause of country and freedom.
Scouting Magazine, March 25, 1920
Today we meet to behold in a beautiful symbol of YOUTH-LIFE-LIBERTY the sympathetic purpose and the exalted genius of Andrew O' Connor.
Nature gives through co-operation, and man belongs to nature. The sun alone can give no gardens; the rain alone can give no harvest; the soil alone can give no trees, no grass, no bushes. 
Man is given a brain that penetrates the universe; an imagination that is boundless; a heart, generous and good; but at the door of perfect peace and happiness man knock in vain!
An Infinite Intelligence has ordained that this perfect gift is for the few, for those who have made a complete and total sacrifice, holding back nothing for themselves.
The perfect gift is given to the soldier who, with his last breath, defies the foe of liberty; it is given to the surgeon who gives himself that others may live; it is given to the nurse who drops at the shot into her open grave.
Boy Scouts of America, you are fortunate in your friends. President Wilson is your friend; Mr. Harrison B. Riley is your friend; President Henneberry and Dr. Stewart are your friends; Mr. Roche and Mr. O'Connor are your friends; Mr. Hibbard and all of the members of the Glen View Club are your friends.
Theodore Roosevelt was, and is, your friend. 
And the state ships go on,
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Men and Women of Glen View Club, take these O'Connor scouts into your friendship and affection. As time rolls on they will speak to you of that country whence they came; the country of long days and precious memories!
O Country of Youth! how sweet and trite and beautiful you are! 
The Scouting Magazine article also quoted from a newspaper report on the sculpture's artistic merit.
The Art World Editor of the Chicago Evening Post says of this group [of boys and their dog]:
"Mr. O'Connor's idea of design appropriately kept within the realm of the present time. The four boys, just four such boys as any club man of Glen View might see along the road or find among the caddies were modeled from the sons of the sculptor. The Boy Scouts do not hark to Greece or Rome or the native Indian, being entirely of the twentieth century and with aims of boy nobility that must lead to an American knighthood of the people far and wide. Remembering these things, it would be difficult, and certainly artificial and remote from the truth, to imagine some other design symbolic and formal while of classic origina. If American art is to be truly American with a distinct quality of its own, it must deal with the present and be independent. And so Mr. O'Connor's group meets the understanding of the man who passes by and the caddies lying on the grass as sculpture born of a modern era and of contemporary life."   
Glen View Club member and treasurer, and Bell Telephone executive, Angus Hibbard, was singled out in Edwin Jackman's dedication speech because Mr. Hibbard was volunteer and major fundraiser for the Boy Scout movement. He served as chairman of the Camp Roosevelt Association which was the fundraising and financial management arm of the organization. Camp Roosevelt was operated as a joint venture of the United States Army, the Chicago Board of Education and the Boy Scouts to train boys -- a builder of boys it was said.
The Playground, April 1922

As much as Mr. Hibbard was in agreement with Edwin Jackman in admiration and support of the Boy Scout movement, Angus Hibbard probably had a different view of the railroads.


The Day Book (Chicago, Illinois), May 31, 1917

You can see from the front view below why the sculpture was sometimes referenced as the Boy Scout fountain. There was indeed a pedestal fountain at the fore that emptied into a shallow reflecting pool.
Scouting Magazine, April 8, 1920, Tenth Annual Report of the Boy Scouts of America, p. 17

Scouting Magazine said scouting was "inspiring artists, writers and sculptors to put into permanent form their conceptions of the idealism and practical service of this movement."

The Boy Scout sculpture was also featured on the cover of the American Magazine of Art.


The American Magazine of Art, Volume XI, November 1919 - December 1920.

An inside photo showed the fountain in its original landscape setting.


The American Magazine of Art, Volume XI, November 1919 - December 1920, p. 33.



Image
Pedestal fountain and
leaf filled reservoir
fronting the Boy
Scout sculpture, above
and below.
ImageThese early photos clearly show the shallow pool framing and a small fountain fronting the sculpture, yielding a cool, calm and reflective image on hot summer days. I recall in the 1960s during my caddie days that the pool filled frequently with wind-blown leaves, grass cuttings and other organic detritus. When Glen View club rehabbed the sculpture and redesigned the setting about ten years back, the pool and fountain were eliminated in favor of a paved patio, with informal seating arrangements (below). 
Modern Setting of the Boy Scout sculpture.



















We finish Part 2a with this description of the sculpture by Arts and Decoration Magazine.
Through the generosity of Edwin S. Jackman, the Glen View Golf Club, Chicago Ill., has enjoyed the privilege of having ever before its members a distinguished example executed by O'Connor, one conceived in the spirit of Americanism and inspired by the memory of Theodore Roosevelt. This Statue, "Boy Scouts of America," a symbol of youth, represents four boys with their dog standing naturally on a large pedestal at the head of a pool. The four boys with their dog standing naturally on a large pedestal at the head of a pool. The four boys, just four real boys, such as we see on all the roads and find among our caddies of the field, were model from the sons of the sculptor.



Arts and Decoration Magazine, Volume XII,  February 20, 1920.


Appendix


Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt - Glen View Club, Golf, IL
Posted by: Groundspeak Premium Member adgorn
N 42° 03.609 W 087° 46.835
16T E 435414 N 4656749
Quick Description: Four boys stand together with a pug dog. The boys appear to be wearing boy scout uniforms -- knickers, boots and a hat.
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 6/10/2010 11:21:35 AM
Waymark Code: WM90W6
Published By: Groundspeak Regular Member Dunbar Loop
Views: 2

Long Description:
From the Smithsonian Arts Inventory at website below:
Sculpture: approx. 5 x 5 x 3 ft.; Base: approx. 4 x 6 x 4 ft.; Fountain: approx H. 5 ft.; Diam. 3 ft.
Inscription: (On proper left, integral base:) O'CONNOR (On proper left front edge of integral base:) RUDER (On front of base:) YOUTH LIFE LIBERTY/THE GIFT OF A CHERISHED MEMEBER/EDWIN STANTON JACKMAN/APRIL 11, 1865-MAY 30, 1927 signed Founder's mark appears.

Commissioned by Edwin S. Jackman, a Glen View Club member at the time of Roosevelt's death in 1919. The models for the four boys were the sculptor's sons, from left to right: Patrick, Owen, Hector, and Roderick, and their pug dog.

ARTIST(S): O'Connor, Andrew, Jr., 1874-1941, sculptor. Ruder, founder.

From Bach & Gray "
"Rather than memorialize Roosevelt with a formal portrait of him, the sculptor chose to also commemorate the Boy Scouts of America, an organization that Roosevelt had close ties to."
The book also contains add'n biographical info on the sculptor, whose best known work in Illinois is a portrait of Lincoln giving his farewell address to the people of Springfield in the state's capitol.

The piece is aka "The Boy Scout Fountain." The area in front of the statue is now a seating area enclosed in a circular ring, which must have been a fountain at one time. In fact I just noticed that Google Maps still shows a fountain there, so this change must have been recent.

The sculpture is located in the members-only Glen View Club - see: (visit link)

I was able to drive in and take my photos with no problem.
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM90W6_Memorial_to_Theodore_Roosevelt_Glen_View_Club_Golf_IL







3 comments:

  1. Hi, this is "adgorn." Glad my waymark was helpful to you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the very thorough post. As a Glenview resident, I appreciate the opportunity to learn more about the club. Please keep the local history posts coming! One question: Is the Rugen cabin still standing?

    ReplyDelete