Cincinnati's Terrace Plaza Hotel (eBook)

CHAPTER 2

THE DEVELOPERS

Emery believed a public building should “reflect the spirit of the age” and contain examples of the best contemporary art.

THE TERRACE PLAZA PROJECT, which was developed over the course of several years in the 1940s, embodied a unique collaboration between hotel developers, architects, designers, engineers, retailers, artists, and corporations. The result was a masterpiece of the Modern movement.

John J. Emery Jr., president of Thomas Emery’s Sons Inc., developed the complex. In many matters, his vice president, Ellsworth F. Ireland, assisted him. Emery was a third-generation Cincinnati businessman and real estate investor who had overhauled the family companies and became one of the most powerful, wealthy, and respected men in the region in the process. His success in building the Carew Tower and Netherland Plaza Hotel earned him a reputation for vision and skill at completing complex projects.

For more than 100 years, the Emery family has had a profound effect upon the city’s built environment as well as its civic, cultural, and economic institutions.

A Cincinnati Dynasty: Thomas Emery’s Sons Inc.

Thomas Emery, his wife, and their son Thomas Josephus immigrated to Cincinnati from England in 1832. They soon had another son, John Josiah, and two daughters, Kezia and Julia. Thomas began investing in real estate—mostly large plots of land and cottages in the country surrounding Cincinnati. In 1840, he began a small lard oil and candle-making factory on Water Street. Business was already flourishing by 1845. Thomas died in an accident in 1851, and his sons began working with the trustees to run the business. They created Thomas Emery’s Sons Inc. and were soon expanding the candle and lard oil business and investing heavily in real estate ventures throughout the city, becoming one of the most powerful and wealthy families in Cincinnati. They built the Hotel Emery and Arcade in 1877 and the city’s first apartment building with private kitchens and bathrooms, the Lombardy, in 1881. Subsequently, they built dozens of apartment buildings—including the Brittany, Saxony, and Normandy—and expanded their real estate operations to cities as far away as New York and San Francisco. In 1881–82, they built the Palace Hotel, now named The Cincinnatian, in the fashionable style of the time.14

Thomas J. Emery married Mary Hopkins in 1866, and they had two sons, who both died young. After Thomas died of pneumonia while on a trip to Egypt in 1906, Mary Hopkins Emery used her substantial inheritance to create the Thomas J. Emery Memorial. She drew upon this fund to finance construction of the Ohio Mechanics Institute and Theater (now The Emery Apartments and Theatre) at Walnut Street and Central Parkway, as well as a major expansion of the Cincinnati Art Museum atop Mount Adams. She also gave large endowments to other arts and social service agencies.

The city of Cincinnati had continued to grow in population (by 20% between 1900 and 1920), but not as rapidly as it had in the 19th century. And by the 1920s, growth by annexation of suburban areas had come to a halt.15 The city acquired a less-than-stellar reputation as a dowdy, over-crowded, and aging place that lacked the political and civic leadership needed to implement change. Mrs. Emery became interested in housing and planning programs that would make Greater Cincinnati a better place in which to live, especially for people of limited means.

Mary Emery’s internationally recognized accomplishment was her vision for suburban Mariemont, a planned, model community that would provide equitable and affordable housing and amenities in a bucolic setting, very different from the pollution and overcrowding that plagued downtown Cincinnati. Between 1913 and 1925, she developed the village of Mariemont, now a National Historic Landmark. Located about seven miles to the east of downtown Cincinnati, Mariemont was one of the first communities in the United States to have underground utility lines. In addition to single-family houses, the village had townhouses and apartment buildings, plus its own school, hospital, inn, church, and theater—all designed in the Tudor Revival style by select local and national architects. It was built to a John Nolen plan that was reminiscent of a European village. The neighborhood is largely preserved and still vibrant today, although rising property values have made the single-family houses far less affordable than Emery intended.16

John J. Emery Sr. preferred to live on the East Coast, where he continued to help manage the brothers’ property and investments. After Thomas’s death, John ran Thomas Emery’s Sons Inc. until his own death in 1908. John had married Lela Alexander in 1892, and they had five children. He commissioned grand houses in Manhattan and Maine, where the couple entertained frequently.

In Bar Harbor, Maine, the family had a magnificent granite “cottage” set in an Oceanside garden. The Turrets, designed by the nationally known architect Bruce Price, was completed in 1895, and renovated in the 1970s for the College of the Atlantic. The following year, the Emery family moved into a New York City house at 5 East 68th Street, near Central Park. Boston architects Peabody & Stearns designed the opulent townhouse, which has been the Consulate of the Republic of Indonesia since 1965.17

John J. Emery Jr. Remakes a City

John Josiah “Jack” Emery Jr. was born in 1898 in New York, and he grew up in the family’s architecturally significant homes in that city and in Bar Harbor. His father died when the boy was ten years old. After his father’s death, his mother also maintained elegant houses in Palm Beach and in France. Jack was educated at the Groton School and Harvard University in Massachusetts as well as at Oxford in England. He served in the U.S. Navy in World War I. In 1924, Emery came to Cincinnati to handle some issues at Thomas Emery’s Sons Inc. The company was not doing well, so Jack decided to stay in Cincinnati temporarily to get the family business back in order. Fortunately for the community, he never left, although he kept up with business and social contacts in the East.

In 1927, Jack Emery married Irene Langhorne Gibson, daughter of artist Charles Dana Gibson. On the east side of Cincinnati, they acquired a large estate spanning Montgomery and Indian Hill, where the prestigious New York firm of Delano & Aldrich designed their handsome Georgian-style house, Peterloon. It was completed in 1929, so construction was simultaneous to the Carew Tower. William Delano served as aesthetic advisor for that project.

The Emery family spent summers in Dark Harbor, Maine, at the Gibson family house which Irene’s father had begun building in 1904. Charles Dana Gibson was the editor as well as an owner of Life magazine, so the young Jack Emery family was privy to the latest trends in art, architecture, and design.18

In Cincinnati, Jack Emery began diversifying Thomas Emery’s Sons Inc., reviving the nostalgic candle business by repackaging and re-marketing the product, expanding the lard oil business to include chemicals and other products used for plastics, and buying a shipping container company in Chicago.19 He also began investing in real estate again and formed plans to utilize the company’s prime parcels in downtown Cincinnati. Charles Livingood was president of Emery Candle Company when Jack Emery arrived in town. But by 1929, the young heir had assumed the chair, changed the name to Emery Industries Inc., and moved the office from the St. Bernard factory to the Fountain Square Building at 500 Walnut Street. And by 1948, Jack Emery was president of his family’s three businesses (Emery Industries Inc., Thomas Emery’s Sons Inc., and Emery Carpenter Container Co.), also president of the Dayton and Michigan Railroad and director of the Cincinnati Equitable Fire Insurance Co.20

Political and Civic Reform

Cincinnati in the mid-1920s was in political turmoil. A coalition of reform-minded citizens united to eliminate bossism, streamline government, and introduce modern efficiencies in city planning and operations. Jack Emery took a leadership role in the movement. He joined the Charter Committee, which won the vote for a new City Charter and fielded candidates for City Council. Emery was a leading supporter of the group and its president for several critical years.

A sophisticated young man, Emery saw many areas in which his adopted city could be improved. He was keenly interested in the city, especially the Central Business District. Emery focused on how it looked, how it worked, and how to enhance its positive effect upon people.21

In 1929, he built the dramatic 48-story Carew Tower (the city’s tallest building until 2010) and the 800-room Netherland Plaza Hotel. It was designed by Chicago architect W.W. Ahlschlager along with Delano & Aldrich. It was a mixed-use project like the Hotel Emery and its popular shopping Arcade.

Jack Emery quickly assumed a leadership role in cultural affairs. He served as president of the Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts and the Cincinnati Art Museum. His family was largely responsible for developing the physical plant and the collections of the art museum. Indeed, Jack succeeded Mary Emery’s amanuensis, Charles Livingood, as president of the museum. Jack Emery recruited Philip Adams as director, and the two began a long adventure in collection and institution building.

Netherland...