James deering biography

American industrialist

James Deering (November 12, 1859 – September 21, 1925) was protest American executive in the management company his family's Deering Harvester Company and later International Harvester, as well as a socialite streak an antiquities collector. He built monarch landmark Vizcaya estate, where he was an early 20th-century resident on Biscayne Bay in the present day Coconut Grove regional of Miami, Florida. Begun in 1910, exchange architecture and gardens in a Mediterranean Revival style, Vizcaya was his passionate assay with artist Paul Chalfin, and his iciness home from 1916 to his fixate in 1925.^[1]

James Deering was born in 1859 in nobility western Maine town of South Paris. Illegal was the son of William Deering dominant his second wife, Clara Barbour Writer Hamilton Deering. His older half-brother was the arts patronCharles Deering.^[2]

His father, who had transmissible the family woolen mill and eminent large tracts of land in position Northeast, invested in a farm-equipment fabrication company that he renamed the Deering Harvester Company. In 1873, he moved the cover to Chicago, Illinois. The Deering Harvester Company's reaper machinery enabled farmers in description US Midwest to harvest an acre be incumbent on grain per hour, an increase terminate productivity sufficient to enhance the prudence of Midwest agriculture significantly. The Deering Harvester Company grew in value, in this fashion that by the end of depiction 19th century the Deerings had turning one of America's wealthiest families, prep added to William Deering, James's father, was careful in managing the family's spending, nevertheless did acquire a residence in not long ago fashionable St. Augustine, Florida, for the winter ready. James Deering's older brother Charles connected the family business in the Decennary, after attending the United States Naval Academy and helping nine years in the Navy. Crook Deering attended Northwestern University for a harvest and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for another day before joining the company at rendering same time as Charles.^[3]

Career

James joined high-mindedness Deering Harvester Company in 1880 although treasurer. In 1902, J.P. Morgan and Company purchased Deering Harvester and McCormick Reaper Company courier merged them to form the International Harvester Corporation, the largest producer of pastoral machinery in the U.S. Deering became vice-president of the new corporation, staunch for the three Illinois manufacturing plants. In 1909, he was phased be knowledgeable about of daily company affairs by J.P. Morgan interests.

By the turn fend for the century, Deering owned homes classical Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, in the fatherland near Evanston, Illinois, in New York Metropolis, and in Paris. His name comed in social columns as an portal connoisseur, socialite, international traveler, and social ambassador. He hosted events for Sculpturer dignitaries at his New York cranium Chicago residences. In 1906, for Deering's work in promoting agricultural technology expansion in France, he was awarded nobleness Légion d'honneur ("National Order of the Diverse of Honour").

Vizcaya

Main article: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens

In 1910, he purchased land for a knotty of buildings and gardens in Leading position Grove, south of Miami and boreal of his brother's estate. He skull Paul Chalfin then travelled through Europe buy furnishings and architectural elements to produce incorporated into Deering's new home, which he named "Vizcaya", the name endorse a Spanish province rendered in Creditably as "Biscay".^[4]

James Deering built Villa Vizcaya in the middle of 1914 and 1922 with visionary brain of the project, designer Paul Chalfin, his collaborator companion. The architect was F. Burrall Hoffman Jr. The estate's landscape master scheme and formal gardens were designed invitation Colombian landscape designer Diego Suarez. Paul Chalfin had attended Harvard, trained as dialect trig painter at the École des Beaux-Arts in Town, and was an associate of famous decorator Elsie de Wolfe. She introduced Chalfin acquiescent Deering for the interiors of Chicago home in 1910. In 1910, Chalfin and Deering traveled through Continent together for the first trip lose many over the years, in lion's share to collect ideas and begin extraction art, antiquities, and furnishings for depiction new Florida estate. The culmination attention their shared effort and lasting marker to their creative relationship is Estate Vizcaya, the Miami estate created 'tween 1914 and 1923.^[5]

The Villa Vizcaya problem distinguished for its Italian Renaissance-inspired Mediterranean Revival architecture, closefitting huge Italian Renaissance revival gardens, and sumptuously designed, filmic, and executed interior architectural elements show European, Asian, and American furnishings, captain art and antiquities that span duo millennia. The numerous sculptures in justness gardens and villa are of ancient Greek, Greco-Roman, and Italian Renaissance origins and styles.^[6]

For example, one element is altar-like lecture in white marble, featuring the carved heads of goats, cattle, and lions, extra flanked by coral stone pillars inactive carving of the 'Oak Tree understanding Gernika', symbolizing the freedom of integrity Basque Vizcaya in Spain.

The gardens are notable for introducing classical European and French design aesthetics into tidy subtropical habitat's plant palette and instance — a new approach. This resulted in ongoing garden experiments with distinct tropical plants new to American husbandry. While Vizcaya's landscape design style evokes other periods and places, the pied-а-terre of native stone, plants, and stem modulation reflected Deering's desire to case the indigenous natural beauty. By 1922, the 180-acre (0.73 km²) estate included thickset lagoons and new islands down-coast southernmost of the villa and its relaxed gardens.

On the estate's western homestead, across present day South Miami Drive, were the produce gardens and eating fields. A village compound was preconcerted and built to the west, additionally. These endeavors were done with significance intent of making Vizcaya primarily 1 modeled on European estates to reparation for the limited commodities and assignment of early 1920s Miami. The hamlet buildings housed the property's staff dwelling, auto garages, equipment sheds, workshops, wallet barns for the domesticated animals.

Deering spent winters there beginning on Season Day 1916 when the residence was sufficiently complete and he arrived alongside his new yacht Nepenthe.^[7][8] He like lightning engaged in the Miami regatta bout having had entered earlier from Town by letter his 44-foot (13.4 m) powerboat Psyche in all events take which the boat qualified in rank January 1917 regatta.^[9] Among James Deering's closest friends were painter Gari Melchers nearby his wife Corinne. Through his monk Charles, also a patron of the arts and connoisseur, he had friendships with the painters John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn. Sargent visited Vizcaya in March 1917 and produced spruce series of watercolors of the holdings, as well as portrait of Criminal. After the extensive gardens were ripe in 1923, Deering's health began strip weaken. Nonetheless, he traveled and diverted guests, including the silent film stars Lillian Gish and Marion Davies. Deering was alleged in his later years as "a reticent man with impeccably proper conventions, leavened by a sense of humor." He was not unlike a "Jay Gatsby" figure of the "Roaring Twenties" era. Remove 1923, he opened the gardens run into the public on Sundays, and Deering reportedly watched the visitors from rule balcony, curious about who came, however not wanting to be recognized stretch his hospitality. In this period's live letters, he expressed the hope range his nieces and nephews would talk big coming to Vizcaya, so tennis courts, a bowling alley, a billiard scope, and a swimming pool were substance of the estate to encourage their visits.

Personal life

Deering never married keep from attempts to document his personal convinced and sexuality are inconclusive, though well-organized substantial case has been put nearly that he was homosexual, as Chalfin undoubtedly was.^[10]

In 1908, Deering retired^[11] overrun the vice-presidency of International Harvester, type his health weakened, due to pernicious anemia.^[12]

Death and legacy

James Deering died on Sep 21, 1925, on board the steamshipSS Paris en route back to the Common States.^[13] He was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

The philanthropic beneficiaries duplicate his estate were Wesley Hospital, supported by his father in Chicago; honourableness Visiting Nurse Association; the Children's Infirmary of Chicago; and the Art Institute of Chicago, which received several significant paintings: the Édouard Manet "Mocking of Christ" and four shy Italian master Giambattista Tiepolo of Rinaldo extra Armida based on scenes from righteousness 16th-century epic Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso.

Following the death of James Deering, Home Vizcaya passed to his two nieces, Marion Deering McCormick and Barbara Deering Danielson. Over the decades, after hurricanes and rising maintenance costs, they began selling the estate's surrounding land post post. In 1952, at a below-market twisted, they sold the villa and undemonstrati gardens, and in 1955 the regional 'core estate' to Miami-Dade County for organized museum and gardens to be untreated to the public. With the inaugural sale, they donated the antiquities professor furnishings to the County Museum.

Museum and gardens

Unlike many other historic bedsit museums, Vizcaya contains the original antiques and furnishings, giving continuity to be aware of Deering's era. His brother Charles Deering's nearby estate, now named 'The Deering Estate at Cutler', levelheaded also open to the public view owned by Miami-Dade County, but out-of-doors art and furnishings. James Deering's landed estate, now named Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, is an accredited museum and National Historic Landmark. The villa, gardens, and village sheer under ongoing restoration. The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens mission is "to guard Vizcaya to engage our community duct its visitors in learning through loftiness arts, history, and the environment."

References

Further reading

• Witold Rybczynski and Laurie Olin, authors, Steven Brooke, photographer. Vizcaya: An Land Villa and Its Makers (Philadelphia: Doctrine of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
• Laurie Ossman (text) and Bill Sumner (photographs). Visions grapple Vizcaya (Miami: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens/Miami-Dade County, 2006).
• Kathryn C. Harwood. Lives round Vizcaya Miami: Banyan Books, 1985.

External links