Ada Small Moore, Art Collector

In our last two articles, we have discussed Frances Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class, organized in 1894.  This week, we look at one of the most fascinating members of the class – Ada Small Moore.

Ada Moore (center) with Reading Class members
Alice Hyde (left) and Julia Herrick (right), May 5, 1902

In her journal, Frances Glessner recorded the last meeting on May 5, 1902 before the class broke for the summer season.  This was the class at which the iconic photo was taken.  In the journal, she noted “Mrs. Wm. Moore was here.”  This was a reference to Ada (Small) Moore who had moved to New York City in 1900, but was visiting Chicago, and therefore able to join the class that morning.

Ada Waterman Small was born in Galena, Illinois on August 17, 1858 to Edward A. and Mary C. (Roberts) Small.  Her parents were both born in Maine, and moved to Galena shortly after their  1852 marriage, where Edward entered into business.  In 1857, he entered the law office of the Hon. Wellington Weigley as a law student, and was admitted to the bar a year later.  He formed a partnership with Weigley, and then continuing his own private practice until 1869 when he moved his family to Chicago. 

In October 1875, Ada Small was married to William H. Moore, an attorney who had joined her father’s law firm three years earlier.  He was ten years her senior.  Edward Small died in 1882 at his residence, 1910 S. Indiana Avenue, and Moore then formed a law partnership with his brother James, who in turn, married Ada’s sister.  The William H. Moores took up residence at 3625 Grand Boulevard (now Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive), later moving to 2922 S. Michigan Avenue.

William H. Moore, often called Judge Moore, became an extremely successful attorney, financier, and corporate organizer.  He organized and sat as a director for several steel companies that merged to create United States Steel.  With his brother, he organized numerous companies including Diamond Match Company, National Biscuit Company (later Nabisco), the American Can Company, the Western Union Telegraph Company, and several railroads.  He was also known as an expert horseman.

In 1900, the Moores moved from Chicago to New York City, purchasing the home then under construction at 4 East 54^th Street.  The house had been commissioned in 1898 by William Earle Dodge Stokes and was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead and White.  However, Stokes marriage was quickly failing and in December 1899 he sold the partially completed house to William and Ada Moore for $325,000.  In reporting the sale, the New York Times stated that the house “may safely be classed as one of the finest private dwellings in the city.”

The house lived up to the description.  Standing five stories tall and three bays wide, it was clad in white marble and designed in the Italian Renaissance style, complete with a balcony extending across the second floor, and a balustrade at the roof level.  The rusticated ground floor was set behind a marble and wrought iron fence.  The interior featured elaborate stained glass, inlaid floors, cast plaster ceilings, and a five-story winding marble staircase.  (Later history:  The house was listed on the National Register in 1972 and is a rare survivor of the residential prominence of 5^th Avenue.  It was purchased by the present owner, Banco Di Napoli, in 1993 for $12.8 million and extensively renovated).

The Moores hosted lavish dinner parties for opera stars and the elite of New York City, and Ada Moore filled the house with Asian antiques.  She became well known as a fine and decorative art collector with her collecting interests including painting by Peter Paul Rubens and John Singer Sargent; Chinese bronzes, paintings, jades, and porcelains; Roman and early Christian glass; Persian miniatures and textiles; Luristan bronzes; Japanese woodcuts; and French furniture.

Rockmarge (above), stables (below)

In 1901, the Moores commissioned the Boston architects Herbert Brown and Arthur Little to undertake a major remodeling of the 1870s E. V. R. Thayer House in the Georgian style.   The remodeled house, set within the stretch of homes in Beverly, Massachusetts known as Prides Crossing or “the Prides” was named “Rockmarge” and was a full sporting estate, to accommodate Moore’s interest in horses.   The home was frequently the site of local charity events, and the extensive gardens were open to the public.  For more information on Rockmarge, visit https://heritagechronicles.com/2016/06/10/prides-crossing-rockmarge-the-gilded-age-remembered/

Ada Small was deeply interest in archaeological excavations in both Iran and Greece.  She donated a scientific library to the American College in Teheran, Iran and received the Order of Elim, First Class.  She was also made an honorary member of the community of Corinth, Greece, funding the museum there, and received the Greek Golden Cross of Saviour’s Regiment. 

She frequently loaned items from her collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University for exhibition, many of the items later donated as gifts and bequests.  The Chinese and Japanese collections at the Yale University Art Gallery were built through her gifts.  She donated cylinders and other ancient Oriental seals to the Morgan Library.  She also presented the Library of Congress with a set of 46 Chinese paintings depicting tilling and weaving, executed in the 17^th century.

Deeply proud of her ancestral heritage, she was a member of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants, the Society of Colonial Dames, and the Daughters of the American Revolution.  She was also a member of the Society of Women Geographers.

William Moore died in 1923, and Ada continued to travel extensively throughout Europe and Asia, collecting many of the objects she later donated to museums.  She lived in the family’s New York home until her death in January 1955 at the age of 96. 

Prominent descendants of the Moores include their son Paul Moore, Sr., founder of Republic Aviator; grandsons the Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, Jr. and Bankers Trust chairman William Moore; and great-granddaughter poet and author Honor Moore.

The Monday Morning Reading Class, Part 2

The photograph of Mrs. Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class, taken by her son George on May 5, 1902, is one of the most iconic images of Glessner House.  Thousands of visitors see the image each year, as a copy is on display in the library where the class took place.  It has also been reproduced in various articles and publications about Frances Glessner and her home.

But there have been a few fundamental problems with the interpretation of the photo.  For one, the image is interpreted primarily as a group photo, with little thought given to the individuals within the class.  Secondly, when the women are described, they are usually identified with respect to their husbands. For example, one will learn that several of the women were the wives of professors at the University of Chicago.  While this is true, it minimizes the women under the umbrella of their husbands and their husbands’ profession.  Given Frances Glessner’s propensity for surrounding herself with people of cultural, artistic, and musical backgrounds and interests, it would seem that she in fact gave very careful thought to the women whom she invited to be members of the class.  Mrs. X would not be selected simply because she was the wife of Mr. X, but rather because she would contribute to the intellectual and social structure of the class. 

This led to a journey to discover the identity of the 34 women who are pictured.  Social convention of the time made the journey a bit more difficult.  On the one copy of the photo on which Frances Glessner identified all the ladies, she refers to them simply as Mrs. Clarke, Mrs. Perry, etc. with no first names.  Additionally, the annual roster of the class she prepared only gives the initials, or occasionally the first name, of the husband.  By consulting the 1902 Blue Book of Chicago and the 1905 Book of Chicagoans (with some additional help from Ancestry.com), we have, at long last, been able to give names to the faces we have so long gazed upon.

The roster for the 1901-1902 class year indicates that there were 64 members of the class, so just over half of those women were in attendance for the final class before it disbanded for the summer.  It also happened to be the last class with Miss Anne E. Trimingham as reader, as she had earlier announced her retirement.  Louise Goldsmith, one of the two sisters of Miss Trimingham who were members of the class, prepared and read a history of the class from the time of its founding in 1894.

Frances Glessner identified the women beginning with the ladies standing on the porch from left to right, then right to left for the middle row, and finally left to right again for the women seated in the front row.  (See key below).   For purposes of this article, the women are listed with their husband’s full name first, followed by their own name, including maiden name, in parentheses. 

1 – Mrs. William R. Linn (Nellie B. Butler)

2 – Mrs. William R. Stirling (Alice I. Hibbard)

3 – Miss Helen Macbeth

4 – Mrs. Henry L. Frank (Henrietta Greenbaum)

5 – Mrs. Hugh J. McBirney (Mary Campbell)

6 – Mrs. John J. Glessner (Frances Macbeth)

7 – Mrs. William H. Colvin (Bessie Small)

8 – Miss Anne E. Trimingham, reader

9 – Mrs. Andrew R. Sheriff (Marguerite Mitchell)

10 – Mrs. Henry H. Donaldson (Julia Vaux)

11 – Mrs. Frederic I. Carpenter (Emma Cook)

12 – Mrs. Benjamin S. Terry (Mary Baldwin)

13 – Mrs. Shailer Mathews (Mary P. Elden)

14 – Mrs. Alfred L. Goldsmith (Louise Trimingham)

15 – Mrs. Frank S. Johnson (Elizabeth B. Ayer)

16 – Mrs. Frank Allport (Kate A. Ellwood)

17 – Mrs. Harry P. Judson (Rebecca A. Gilbert)

18 – Mrs. Philo A. Otis (Alice J. Sanford)

19 – Mrs. Robert B. Gregory (Addie V. Hibbard)

20 – Mrs. Secor Cunningham (Althea I. Stone)

21 – Mrs. John J. Herrick (Julia T. Dulon)

22 – Mrs. William H. Moore (Ada W. Small)

23 – Mrs. James N. Hyde (Alice L. Griswold)

24 – Mrs. Howard E. Perry (Grace Henderson)

25 – Mrs. William E. Casselberry (Lilian Hibbard)

26 – Mrs. William G. Hale (Harriet K. Swinburne)

27 – Mrs. John H. Hamline (Josephine Meade)

28 – Mrs. Carl D. Buck (Clarinda Swazey)

29 – Mrs. Blewett H. Lee (Frances Glessner)

30 – Mrs. Frederic A. Delano (Matilda A. Peabody)

31 – Mrs. Horace K. Tenney (Eleanor Favill)

32 – Mrs. William G. Hibbard, Jr. (Susan D. Follansbee)

33 – Mrs. Frank P. Wheeler (Elizabeth F. Trimingham)

34 – Mrs. Edmund A. S. Clarke (Louisa H. Ward)

There are only two single ladies in the photo – Miss Trimingham, the reader, and Helen Macbeth, the sister of Frances Glessner.  As a general rule, only married women were invited into class membership.  Additionally, residency on the South Side was a requirement, although one could remain a member of the class if they later moved to another part of the city.  Only two of the women pictured had “defected” to the north side by 1902 – one moving to Cedar Street, the other to Wellington Avenue.  (The number of north siders would increase dramatically in later years as Prairie Avenue fell into decline.)  Seven of the ladies lived in Hyde Park due to their husbands being on the faculty of the University of Chicago, but it was interesting to note the presence of three women married to physicians who were also professors at Northwestern University.

Surprisingly, one lady pictured resided in New York City, Ada Small Moore.  We shall learn more about her in our next installment.