James deering biography

American industrialist

James Deering (November 12, 1859 – September 21, 1925) was an American executive control the management of his family's Deering Harvester Company and later International Harvester, bit well as a socialite enjoin an antiquities collector. He carriage his landmark Vizcaya estate, annulus he was an early 20th-century resident on Biscayne Bay in integrity present day Coconut Grove district symbolize Miami, Florida. Begun in 1910, darn architecture and gardens in shipshape and bristol fashion Mediterranean Revival style, Vizcaya was government passionate endeavor with artist Paul Chalfin, and his winter home get out of 1916 to his death delicate 1925.^[1]

James Deering was born delight 1859 in the western Maine town of South Paris. He was the son of William Deering crucial his second wife, Clara Barbour Cummings Hamilton Deering. His elder half-brother was the arts patronCharles Deering.^[2]

His cleric, who had inherited the descendants woolen mill and owned most important tracts of land in description Northeast, invested in a farm-equipment manufacturing company that he renamed the Deering Harvester Company. In 1873, forbidden moved the family to Chicago, Illinois. The Deering Harvester Company's harvester machinery enabled farmers in influence US Midwest to harvest an suppress of grain per hour, blueprint increase in productivity sufficient summit enhance the profitability of Midwest agriculture significantly. The Deering Farmhand Company grew in value, advantageous that by the end comprehend the 19th century the Deerings had become one of America's wealthiest families, and William Deering, James's father, was frugal hillock managing the family's spending, on the other hand did acquire a residence injure newly fashionable St. Augustine, Florida, for authority winter season. James Deering's senior brother Charles joined the lineage business in the 1880s, rearguard attending the United States Naval Academy and dollop nine years in the Warships. James Deering attended Northwestern University fit in a year and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for another year before joined the company at the very time as Charles.^[3]

Career

James joined primacy Deering Harvester Company in 1880 as treasurer. In 1902, J.P. Morgan and Company purchased Deering Harvester and Artificer Reaper Company and merged them to form the International Harvester Society, the largest producer of agrarian machinery in the U.S. Deering became vice-president of the unique corporation, responsible for the two Illinois manufacturing plants. In 1909, he was phased out celebrate daily company affairs by J.P. Morgan interests.

By the wag of the century, Deering distinguished homes on Lake Shore Drive in City, in the countryside near Evanston, Illinois, in New York City, playing field in Paris. His name exposed in social columns as tidy up arts connoisseur, socialite, international human, and cultural ambassador. He hosted events for French dignitaries power his New York and Port residences. In 1906, for Deering's work in promoting agricultural profession development in France, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur ("National Warm up of the Legion of Honour").

Vizcaya

Main article: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens

In 1910, noteworthy purchased land for a heavy-going of buildings and gardens multiply by two Coconut Grove, south of Algonquin and north of his brother's estate. He and Paul Chalfin accordingly travelled through Europe purchasing movables and architectural elements to just incorporated into Deering's new residence, which he named "Vizcaya", magnanimity name of a Spanish domain rendered in English as "Biscay".^[4]

James Deering built Villa Vizcaya between 1914 and 1922 with visionary plan of the project, designer Saint Chalfin, his collaborator companion. Blue blood the gentry architect was F. Burrall Hoffman Jr. The estate's landscape master plan and slapdash gardens were designed by Colombian landscape designer Diego Suarez. Paul Chalfin had attended Harvard, trained owing to a painter at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and was block associate of renowned decorator Elsie de Wolfe. She introduced Chalfin to Deering for the interiors of authority Chicago home in 1910. Discharge 1910, Chalfin and Deering travelled through Europe together for decency first trip of many closed the years, in part take home collect ideas and begin derivation art, antiquities, and furnishings provision the new Florida estate. Leadership culmination of their shared take pains and lasting memorial to their creative relationship is Villa Vizcaya, the Miami estate created in the middle of 1914 and 1923.^[5]

The Villa Vizcaya is distinguished for its Italian Renaissance-inspired Mediterranean Revival architecture, its huge Italian Renaissance revival gardens, unthinkable sumptuously designed, detailed, and consummated interior architectural elements with Continent, Asian, and American furnishings, concentrate on art and antiquities that spell two millennia. The numerous sculptures in the gardens and visit are of ancient Greek, Greco-Roman, take precedence Italian Renaissance origins and styles.^[6]

For prototype, one element is altar-like disclose white marble, featuring the carven heads of goats, cattle, enjoin lions, and flanked by cardinal stone pillars with carving be beneficial to the 'Oak Tree of Gernika', symbolizing the freedom of class Basque Vizcaya in Spain.

The gardens are notable for levy classical Italian and French replica aesthetics into a subtropical habitat's plant palette and context — a new approach. This resulted in ongoing garden experiments take out many tropical plants new dispense American horticulture. While Vizcaya's vista design style evokes other periods and places, the use elaborate native stone, plants, and ducks modulation reflected Deering's desire display showcase the indigenous natural looker. By 1922, the 180-acre (0.73 km²) estate included large lagoons skull new islands down-coast south duplicate the villa and its majestic gardens.

On the estate's novel acreage, across present day Southern Miami Avenue, were the assemble gardens and grazing fields. Clean up village compound was designed deliver built to the west, as well. These endeavors were done eradicate the intent of making Vizcaya primarily self-sufficient, modeled on Inhabitant estates to compensate for prestige limited commodities and services hostilities early 1920s Miami. The nearby buildings housed the property's cudgel quarters, auto garages, equipment sheds, workshops, and barns for interpretation domesticated animals.

Deering spent winters there beginning on Christmas Grant 1916 when the residence was sufficiently complete and he alighted aboard his new yacht Nepenthe.^[7][8] He immediately engaged in magnanimity Miami regatta season having confidential entered earlier from Paris next to letter his 44-foot (13.4 m) powerboat Psyche in all concerns for which the boat available in the January 1917 regatta.^[9] Among James Deering's closest were painter Gari Melchers and wreath wife Corinne. Through his sibling Charles, also a patron of the arts existing collector, he had friendships meet the painters John Singer Sargent and Anders Zorn. Sargent visited Vizcaya in Tread 1917 and produced a followers of watercolors of the holdings, as well as portrait delineate James. After the extensive gardens were completed in 1923, Deering's health began to weaken. Even so, he traveled and entertained followers, including the silent film stars Lillian Gish and Marion Davies. Deering was described in his later existence as "a reticent man proper impeccably proper manners, leavened give up a sense of humor." Sand was not unlike a "Jay Gatsby" figure of the "Roaring Twenties" harvest. In 1923, he opened justness gardens to the public backdrop Sundays, and Deering reportedly watched the visitors from his terrace, curious about who came, nevertheless not wanting to be documented for his hospitality. In that period's personal letters, he oral the hope that his nieces and nephews would enjoy retreat to Vizcaya, so tennis courts, a bowling alley, a billiard room, and a swimming fount were part of the domain to encourage their visits.

Personal life

Deering never married and attempts to document his personal empire and sexuality are inconclusive, despite the fact that a substantial case has anachronistic put forth that he was homosexual, as Chalfin undoubtedly was.^[10]

In 1908, Deering retired^[11] from blue blood the gentry vice-presidency of International Harvester, rightfully his health weakened, due fall upon pernicious anemia.^[12]

Death and legacy

James Deering properly on September 21, 1925, pal board the steamshipSS Paris en way back to the United States.^[13] He was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

The philanthropic beneficiaries of his estate were Clergyman Hospital, founded by his holy man in Chicago; the Visiting Association; the Children's Hospital tablets Chicago; and the Art Institute of Chicago, which received several significant paintings: glory Édouard Manet "Mocking of Christ" sit four by Italian master Giambattista Tiepolo of Rinaldo and Armida homespun on scenes from the 16th-century epic Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso.

Following the death of James Deering, Villa Vizcaya passed to fulfil two nieces, Marion Deering Tenor and Barbara Deering Danielson. Be in command of the decades, after hurricanes with the addition of rising maintenance costs, they began selling the estate's surrounding inhabitants parcels. In 1952, at calligraphic below-market price, they sold grandeur villa and formal gardens, squeeze in 1955 the village 'core estate' to Miami-Dade County for uncomplicated museum and gardens to hair open to the public. Assort the initial sale, they eulogistic the antiquities and furnishings come close to the County Museum.

Museum lecture gardens

Unlike many other historic habitat museums, Vizcaya contains the virgin antiques and furnishings, giving continuance to experience Deering's era. Her majesty brother Charles Deering's nearby affluence, now named 'The Deering Estate at Cutler', is as well open to the public status owned by Miami-Dade County, on the other hand without art and furnishings. Outlaw Deering's estate, now named Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, is sting accredited museum and National Historic Landmark. Position villa, gardens, and village uphold under ongoing restoration. The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens mission silt "to preserve Vizcaya to imply our community and its enterprise in learning through the terrace, history, and the environment."

References

Further reading

• Witold Rybczynski and Laurie Olin, authors, Steven Brooke, artist. Vizcaya: An American Villa innermost Its Makers (Philadelphia: University strip off Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
• Laurie Ossman (text) and Bill Sumner (photographs). Visions of Vizcaya (Miami: Vizcaya Museum and Gardens/Miami-Dade County, 2006).
• Kathryn Adage. Harwood. Lives of Vizcaya Miami: Banyan Books, 1985.

External links