Women Philanthropists Born in the 1870's

Women Philanthropists Born in the 1870’s

Winifred Holt (1870-1945) began her work with the blind by setting up a Ticket Bureau for the blind in New York City in 1903.  In 1905 the New York Association for the Blind was founded to educate the public to the possibility of making blindness no impediment to self-support and to work for the prevention of blindness.  Holt was secretary and a leading fundraiser for 9 years.  She helped set up a workroom for broom making which grew into the first “Light House” in 1913.  Lighthouses were set up internationally, including Italy, Poland, India and China.  She began a braille magazine for children.  When she married in 1922, the request for donations as gifts raised $500,000.  She was named a chevalier in the French Legion of Honor and received medals from Belgian, French and Italian governments for her life work.

  Helena Rubinstein (1870-1965) created a multimillion cosmetic industry.  Born in Poland, she emigrated to Australia in 1902 and went to London in 1908 where she opened her salon with $100,000, using her knowledge of dermatology.  She moved to Paris and fled to America in 1915.  She gave generously to Israel and founded the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv.  In 1953 she set up the Helena Rubinstein Foundation which supported health, medical research and rehabilitation, and the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and provided scholarships for Israelis.

           Edith Rockefeller McCormick (1872-1932) was a Chicago society leader and supporter of opera.  She and her husband were prime movers in founding the Chicago Opera Company in 1910.  Over 30 years, their fortunes provided commissioned translations of 22 operas into English.  They also attempted to achieve “reasonable” ticket prices.    In 1913 McCormick studied with Jung in Zurich and contributed to his research.  She endowed the Psychological Club.  She supported James Joyce with a thousand francs for months as he wrote Ulysses.  In 1923 she founded the Chicago Zoological Gardens to support the study of experimental psychology.

Anne Morgan (1873-1952) supported women shirtwaist strikers in 1909 and in 1910 she helped found the Working Girls’ Vacation Association.  In 1913 she inherited $3,000,000 from John Pierpont Morgan.   In 1914 she offered the use of her mansion near Versailles to the French government.  She founded the American Fund for French wounded soldiers and established health centers, libraries and camps.  She also provided medical supplies and food.  In 1932 she was the first American woman awarded Commander of the Legion of Honor by the French.  In 1924 she raised funds for the American Woman’s Association to provide home and recreational facilities for 1,200 professional women of moderate means.  In 1928 a 27- story clubhouse opened.  Morgan was president from 1928 to 1943.  During WW II she set up relief centers in France.  In 1927 she envisaged a time when women “will take their places beside men as partners, unafraid, useful, successful and free.”  She disclaimed being a feminist!

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874-1948) was a co-founder of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  She served on its board as treasurer and later vice-chairman.  She donated about 200 paintings and more than 1600 prints to the museum.  During the depression she commissioned paintings, many of which she distributed to colleges throughout the East.  Her interest in American folk art resulted in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Collection of paintings, carved animals and dolls in Williamsburg, Virginia.  She was a sister-in-law of Edith McCormick.

Katharine Dexter McCormick (1875-1967) spoke for woman suffrage at the first open-air demonstration in Massachusetts in 1909.  She paid the $6,000 debt of the Woman’s Journal, the suffrage publication in 1912. In the 1920s she established the Neuroendocrine Research Foundation at Harvard Medical School and subsidized endocrine research and the journal Endocrinology.  She supported the work of Margaret Sanger and the research of Gregory Pincus to develop an oral contraceptive pill with a $5,000,000 endowment.  She donated money for an art museum in Santa Barbara.  She provided funds to build first-class dormitories for 342 women at MIT, the Stanley McCormick Hall West in 1962 and East in 1968, removing the excuse that women could not be enrolled because of lack of housing.

Mary Curtis Bok Zimbalist (1876-1970) used her inheritance from her mother to build the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia to bring music to disadvantaged children.  She provided $500,000 to found the Curtis Institute of Music in 1924 to honor her father, Cyrus Curtis.  When the total endowment reached $12,500,000 the school abolished tuition. Over the years Leopold Stokowski led the student orchestra; students included Barber, Menotti and Bernstein.  She also assisted the futurist composer George Antheil in 1921. She often provided living expenses and pianos to needy students.  She opened the Rockport summer music colony in Maine.  In her father’s memory she gave the world’s largest movable pipe organ to the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.  She donated the Annie Russell Theater to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.  

References used include

Notable American Women, 1609-1950

Notable American Women, The Modern Period

Notable American Women, Completing the Twentieth Century 
History of Woman Suffrage, Volumes 1 to 6 
Slack, Charles, Hetty Green, America’s First Female Tycoon.  2004