Story of Gurdon Wattles one of Omaha's biggest successes -- 5/4/2008
Gurdon Wallace Wattles, whose family name was McWattles before immigration to the United States from Scotland, was born on a farm in Tioga County, N.Y., in 1855.
In 1876, his family moved to Carroll County, Iowa, and he enrolled at Iowa State University in Ames, where he financed his education by working on the college farm and tending the school’s kitchen fires. His autobiography says he ended the first year with $20 in his pocket, his only non-school, out of pocket expenses being a $5 suit and a 25-cent comb. He worried about the comb purchase for weeks as being extravagant.
After graduation, he taught school for $35 a month, becoming superintendent of schools in 1878.
After failing in a bid for a county office, Wattles went to law school and after being admitted to the Iowa Bar, began practicing in Carroll. In 1882, he was one of the incorporators of the Farmers Bank of Carroll and three years later formed the Rochester Loan & Banking Co. in New Hampshire. It became one of the largest such firms in the Northeast.
In 1887, Wattles established the First National Bank of Carroll and four years later was said to be a director or owner of 16 Iowa banks.
In 1892, at age 36, he moved to Omaha as vice president, and later president, of the Union National Bank. On his arrival, he sold his interest in several Iowa farms, more than doubling his money in some cases, to invest in Omaha real estate and buy stock in the Omaha Street Railway Co. at $30 a share. It was his prediction that the street railway would cause land values in all parts of the city served by the system to balloon.
He admitted “this decision was erroneous” and said he should have simply bought undervalued downtown real estate. Still, he decided to see the decision through, became a director of the company in 1902 and was heavily involved in the bitter strike of 1909. It was his position that no one should be forced to join a union. He held fast for three months, “no compromise was made, and the strikers were defeated.
“The union was destroyed,” while he vowed to keep “Omaha an open-shop town.”
Interestingly Wattles also attacked the railroads for manipulating and controlling freight rates.
Soon after he arrived, while living at the Millard Hotel, he commissioned construction of a $15,000 Chateauesque mansion at 320 S. 37th St., which, although the porte-cochere was removed in 1955, survives as apartments today.
In 1895, on the heels of the depression of 1893, William Jennings Bryan proposed that Omaha host an exposition similar to Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, to boost the local economy. Wattles, a director of what the Omaha Commercial Club and other organizations proposed as the Trans- Mississippi and International Exposition Corp., was almost immediately elected as its president.
He quickly visited each state in the region and oversaw fundraising from individuals and corporations as well as local, state and federal sources. Thirty-one states and numerous cities and organizations ultimately participated, producing an undreamed-of success.
At the end of the 1898 fair, 2.5 million tickets had been sold, 300,000 in one week, with nearly a third of those sold Oct. 12 alone, when President William McKinley arrived.
Amazingly, the corporate stockholders, who had anticipated their investments as donations, got back 90 percent of their money. Wattles was universally given the credit.
In 1903, again as a corporate director, he was credited with the Omaha arrival of the Chicago Great Western Railroad and immediately set out to establish a grain exchange for the city with himself as president. It was this grain exchange that he felt was his public service of greatest value to the city.
In 1905, Wattles bought 90 acres of undeveloped agricultural land in what would become Hollywood, Calif., and began planning a series of gardens and a mansion he called Jualita as a summer home.
In 1904, he was elected president of Nebraska’s delegation to the World’s Fair in St. Louis and the following year became president of Ak-Sar-Ben, ascending to its king in 1908.
With a voiced lack of adequate hotel rooms in 1913, Arthur D. Brandeis donated lots on the northwest corner of 18th and Douglas streets. Wattles again formed a corporation, which hired Thomas R. Kimball to design the 20-floor Fontenelle Hotel, one of his most visible contributions to Omaha’s economy.
Wattles died in California in 1932. His home there, said to be the first mansion in Hollywood, was sold to the city of Los Angeles in 1965, restored in 1983 and in 1993 declared a Los Angeles Cultural Monument and major tourist attraction.
A truly Horatio Alger-like rise from worrying about a 25-cent comb purchase to a brilliant, energetic entrepreneur and one of Omaha’s prime movers at the beginning of the 20th century.
Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.
In 1876, his family moved to Carroll County, Iowa, and he enrolled at Iowa State University in Ames, where he financed his education by working on the college farm and tending the school’s kitchen fires. His autobiography says he ended the first year with $20 in his pocket, his only non-school, out of pocket expenses being a $5 suit and a 25-cent comb. He worried about the comb purchase for weeks as being extravagant.
After graduation, he taught school for $35 a month, becoming superintendent of schools in 1878.
After failing in a bid for a county office, Wattles went to law school and after being admitted to the Iowa Bar, began practicing in Carroll. In 1882, he was one of the incorporators of the Farmers Bank of Carroll and three years later formed the Rochester Loan & Banking Co. in New Hampshire. It became one of the largest such firms in the Northeast.
In 1887, Wattles established the First National Bank of Carroll and four years later was said to be a director or owner of 16 Iowa banks.
In 1892, at age 36, he moved to Omaha as vice president, and later president, of the Union National Bank. On his arrival, he sold his interest in several Iowa farms, more than doubling his money in some cases, to invest in Omaha real estate and buy stock in the Omaha Street Railway Co. at $30 a share. It was his prediction that the street railway would cause land values in all parts of the city served by the system to balloon.
He admitted “this decision was erroneous” and said he should have simply bought undervalued downtown real estate. Still, he decided to see the decision through, became a director of the company in 1902 and was heavily involved in the bitter strike of 1909. It was his position that no one should be forced to join a union. He held fast for three months, “no compromise was made, and the strikers were defeated.
“The union was destroyed,” while he vowed to keep “Omaha an open-shop town.”
Interestingly Wattles also attacked the railroads for manipulating and controlling freight rates.
Soon after he arrived, while living at the Millard Hotel, he commissioned construction of a $15,000 Chateauesque mansion at 320 S. 37th St., which, although the porte-cochere was removed in 1955, survives as apartments today.
In 1895, on the heels of the depression of 1893, William Jennings Bryan proposed that Omaha host an exposition similar to Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, to boost the local economy. Wattles, a director of what the Omaha Commercial Club and other organizations proposed as the Trans- Mississippi and International Exposition Corp., was almost immediately elected as its president.
He quickly visited each state in the region and oversaw fundraising from individuals and corporations as well as local, state and federal sources. Thirty-one states and numerous cities and organizations ultimately participated, producing an undreamed-of success.
At the end of the 1898 fair, 2.5 million tickets had been sold, 300,000 in one week, with nearly a third of those sold Oct. 12 alone, when President William McKinley arrived.
Amazingly, the corporate stockholders, who had anticipated their investments as donations, got back 90 percent of their money. Wattles was universally given the credit.
In 1903, again as a corporate director, he was credited with the Omaha arrival of the Chicago Great Western Railroad and immediately set out to establish a grain exchange for the city with himself as president. It was this grain exchange that he felt was his public service of greatest value to the city.
In 1905, Wattles bought 90 acres of undeveloped agricultural land in what would become Hollywood, Calif., and began planning a series of gardens and a mansion he called Jualita as a summer home.
In 1904, he was elected president of Nebraska’s delegation to the World’s Fair in St. Louis and the following year became president of Ak-Sar-Ben, ascending to its king in 1908.
With a voiced lack of adequate hotel rooms in 1913, Arthur D. Brandeis donated lots on the northwest corner of 18th and Douglas streets. Wattles again formed a corporation, which hired Thomas R. Kimball to design the 20-floor Fontenelle Hotel, one of his most visible contributions to Omaha’s economy.
Wattles died in California in 1932. His home there, said to be the first mansion in Hollywood, was sold to the city of Los Angeles in 1965, restored in 1983 and in 1993 declared a Los Angeles Cultural Monument and major tourist attraction.
A truly Horatio Alger-like rise from worrying about a 25-cent comb purchase to a brilliant, energetic entrepreneur and one of Omaha’s prime movers at the beginning of the 20th century.
Historian Jim McKee, who still writes with a fountain pen, invites comments or questions. Write to him in care of the Journal Star or at jim@leebooksellers.com.
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