Microfilm copy must be used. (MF Roll #36579)

Biography:

Wharton Green

Wharton Green was born in Jackson, Mississippi, on October 17, 1879. He was the son of George Stewart Green (1847–1925) and Margaret Wharton Green (1855–1906) of Jackson. George Stewart Green served in the Confederate cavalry and was a prisoner of war on Ship Island after his capture. After the war Green was associated with the Pearl River Foundry and Agricultural Works in Jackson. George Stewart Green married Margaret Wharton. She was the daughter of Thomas J. Wharton (1817–1900) who served as attorney general of Mississippi, circuit judge of the Ninth Judicial District of Mississippi, and as an elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson. Judge Wharton was also a close friend of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Upon graduation from the (old) Central High School in Jackson, Wharton Green entered Millsaps College. He was a member of Kappa Alpha fraternity and active in athletics, especially gymnastics and track. Green graduated in 1898 with a bachelor of science degree with an emphasis in civil engineering. Millsaps would later confer an honorary doctor of science degree on Wharton Green in 1945.

After leaving Millsaps College, Green accepted a position with the Illinois Central Railroad Company in 1899. He gained valuable civil engineering experience during the construction of a thirty-mile segment of the ICRR in the Grenada, Mississippi, area. Green resigned from the ICRR in 1901 to accept a position as civil engineer for the construction of the Westinghouse plant, Manchester, England. Green was employed in Great Britain from 1901 to 1904, working for Westinghouse, the electrification of the Mersey Tunnel, and on engineering projects in Scotland.

While working in Great Britain, Green briefly returned to the United States to marry his college sweetheart, Clara Barton (1880–1946), at Christ Church, Napoleonville, Louisiana, on September 15, 1903. Clara Barton was the daughter of Carroll and Carrie Kittredge Barton of Belclos and Magnolia sugar plantations in Assumption Parish, Louisiana. She was also an 1899 graduate of Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi.

After returning to the United States, Green worked as construction engineer and superintendent for James Stewart and Company, Baltimore, Maryland, from 1904 to 1905, rebuilding many commercial buildings destroyed by fire, before accepting a position as construction engineer and assistant general superintendent with the Thompson-Starrett Company in New York City. Green worked for this company until 1909 and was responsible for supervising the construction of many large buildings in New York City. He next worked as construction manager for the Hedden Construction Company in New York City from 1909 to 1912, erecting numerous public and private buildings. Green became president and general manager of the Beaver Construction Company in New York City in 1912. Wharton Green and Company would become the successor to this firm in 1916.

The Greens had three children, Margaret (b. 1905); Clarissa (b. 1908); and Wharton, Jr. (b. 1910). They lived in Orange, New Jersey, from 1906 to 1911, and in East Orange, New Jersey from 1912 to 1915. Wharton Green and his family moved into a large Tudor Revival-style house which he designed and built in Summit, New Jersey, in 1915. He served as a first lieutenant in the New Jersey State Militia during World War I. Green was also an aide to Governor William N. Runyon of New Jersey during the war. Clara Barton Green served in the Red Cross in Summit during World War I.

As president of Wharton Green and Company, Green was responsible for constructing many important public and private buildings in New York City, including the Baptist Home for Aged, The Daily News Publishing Plant, Eastman Kodak Film Storage Building, Jewish Community House, Sperry and Hutchinson Building, Studebaker Service Building, and Vanderbilt Clinic, Columbia University. Perhaps his most impressive commission during this period was the construction of earthquake-proof buildings for the United States Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, for one million dollars.

In 1933, with fewer and fewer lucrative construction projects on the horizon for Wharton Green and Company during the Depression, Green accepted an appointment in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration from Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, and head of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. He served as special agent in charge of investigating the cost-effectiveness of $500,000,000 of federally funded construction projects in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. He was subsequently appointed resident project engineer by Ickes in 1935 to supervise the construction of the Triborough Bridge and the Midtown Hudson [River] Tunnel in New York City, serving until his resignation in 1936.

Clara Barton Green supplemented her husband's income during the Depression by selling homemade pralines and other delicacies through her successful candy-making business, Southern Confections. She also sold real estate in New Jersey in the 1930s. Green was very active in the Woman's National Farm and Garden Association.

Wharton Green next accepted an appointment as liaison engineer and technical advisor of the 1939 New York World's Fair in 1936. He was responsible for supervising the construction of $60,000,000 in permanent improvements in infrastructure, as well as consulting with representatives of foreign governments erecting pavilions at the fair. Green also served as demolition engineer after the close of the fair, supervising the dismantling and clearing of all non-permanent structures from the site by 1941.

In 1942, Green became a general partner in the New York City firm, Jay Downer, Consulting Engineer, Wharton Green, Associate. The firm was commissioned by New York City that same year to design and supervise the construction of the New York International Airport (Idlewild). Its name was changed to Downer, Green, and Carrillo, with the addition of E. J. Carrillo as a general partner in 1945. E. J. Carrillo and Wharton Green organized their own firm, Carrillo and Green Associates, Consulting Engineers, with offices in Rockefeller Plaza, in 1947. They were retained by the Port of New York Authority to design and supervise all field work necessary to complete the construction of Idlewild. At the time of its completion, Idlewild, with its tangentially patterned runways built on about 5,000 acres of hydraulically filled land in the borough of Queens, was the largest commercial airport in the world. This firm also constructed three additional runways for the municipal airport of Newark, New Jersey.

Wharton Green was a licensed professional engineer in New Jersey and New York and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Military Engineers, and Engineers of Club of New York. He was also a member of the Baltusrol Golf Club of Springfield, New Jersey, Free and Accepted Masons (New Jersey), Kappa Alpha Fraternity, New York Southern Society, and Princeton Club of New York. Green retired from the engineering profession in 1952. He died in Murray Hill, New Jersey, on April 18, 1957.

 

Scope and Content Note:

The Wharton Green and family scrapbook contains clippings, photographs, correspondence, and memorabilia, documenting the lives and careers of Wharton Green and his wife, Clara Barton Green, and various members of their allied families. The scrapbook provides a meticulous record of Wharton Green's career as a civil engineer, architect, builder, and contractor, primarily in New York City, from 1905 until his retirement in 1952. It also documents the business and social activities of Clara Barton Green from the time of her marriage in 1903 until her death in 1946. The scrapbook further documents the history and genealogy of the Green and Wharton families of Jackson, Mississippi, and the Barton and Kittredge families of Assumption Parish, Louisiana.

Wharton Green's early life in Jackson, Mississippi, is well documented in the scrapbook. Included are photographs of Green, his parents, George Stewart and Margaret Wharton Green, and the family home on North State Street, clippings and photographs pertaining to Green's education in the public schools, and clippings concerning his part-time employment as a newspaper carrier for the Daily Clarion-Ledger from 1889 to 1894.

The portion of the scrapbook devoted to Wharton Green's years at Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, includes clippings and photographs of his participation in academic, athletic, and social aspects of campus life. Present are report cards that provide a record of Green's high academic standing and images of Green's 1898 graduating class, his gymnastics and track competitions, his membership in the Kappa Alpha fraternity, and his future wife, Clara Barton.

An apprenticeship in the engineering department of the Illinois Central Railroad Company at Evansville, Indiana, soon after graduating from Millsaps College is chronicled in a letter that Wharton Green wrote to his mother on August 15, 1899. Additional ICRR promotions are listed in scrapbook annotations made by Green. Of interest is a photograph of the construction of a thirty-mile segment of the ICRR near Grenada, Mississippi, to which Green was assigned as a civil engineer from 1899 until his resignation in 1901.

Green's subsequent employment in Manchester, England, is documented by clippings and a series of photographs of the construction of the Westinghouse plant in Manchester and the team of United States engineers that were assigned to the project, circa 1901 to 1903. Additional photographs depict Green supervising the construction of an electric-generating plant in Glasgow, Scotland, for the Clyde Valley Power Company from 1903 to 1904. Other images document Wharton Green's trips to France, Germany, and Italy while he was working in Great Britain from 1901 to 1904. There are also images of the Greens' trip to the Continent and their return to the United States on the Hamburg American ocean liner, Konigen Louise, in 1904.

After a disastrous fire in Baltimore, James Stewart and Company, a contractor of that city, was anxious to recruit Wharton Green as soon as his professional obligations were met in Great Britain, and this fact is well documented in a March 2, 1904, letter from Stewart to Green. Following the completion of his last construction project in Scotland, Green accepted a position as construction superintendent with this Baltimore firm. From 1904 until his resignation in 1905, he would supervise the rebuilding of numerous fire-damaged structures in the city. Although there are no clippings or images pertaining to actual James Stewart and Company construction projects, there are two photographs of the Greens' first apartment in Baltimore.

Shortly after accepting a position with the New York City construction firm, Thompson-Starrett Company, Wharton Green, his wife, Clara, and daughter, Margaret, relocated to East Orange, New Jersey. Despite the fact that Green would have been very busy professionally during this time, there is very little documentation in the scrapbook pertaining to the New York City construction projects that he supervised for the Thompson-Starrett Company and the succeeding construction firms that Green worked for, including the Hedden Construction Company and the Beaver Construction Company. Of interest is a January 21, 1914, letter written by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., New York City, to Wharton Green, Beaver Construction Company, New York City, regarding the bidding on a construction project.

From the time Wharton Green and Company was organized in 1916, Green began to keep a more detailed record of the important construction projects that his company had completed in New York City. Green's scrapbook includes clippings and images of the Baptist Home for the Aged, Finchley Building, Jewish Community Center, Sperry and Hutchinson Building, Studebaker Service Building, and various other structures built by his company. There are also clippings and images of what is arguably Wharton Green and Company's most significant commission during this period, the construction of a new million-dollar, earthquake-proof United States embassy complex in Tokyo, Japan. Detailed lists of construction projects undertaken by Green's company are also included in the scrapbook. There are also lists of architects and clients with whom Green worked.

As a successful engineer working in New York City, Wharton Green and his family prospered during the early twentieth century. They lived in a series of comfortable homes in Orange and East Orange, New Jersey, before moving into a large Tudor Revival home designed and built by Green in Summit, New Jersey, in 1915. The scrapbook contains many photographs of the Green family residences in Orange, East Orange, and Summit, New Jersey. It also documents the domestic life of the Green family in these New Jersey cities and on vacation in Nantucket.

Wharton Green received a commission as a first lieutenant in Company A, Fourth Battalion, New Jersey State Militia after the United States entered World War I. As an aide to New Jersey Governor William N. Runyon, he escorted the governor and his wife to various public appearances in New Jersey. There are a number of clippings and photographs documenting Green's state militia service during and shortly after the war. Included are clippings and photographs pertaining to Clara Barton Green's service with the Red Cross in Summit, New Jersey, during World War I.

With a wide circle of friends Wharton Green frequently attended various charity and social functions in New Jersey and New York. He was a member of the Baltusrol Golf Club, Springfield, New Jersey, the Kappa Alpha Southern Club of New York, and the New York Southern Society. Green was also active in Summit, New Jersey, community theatre. His scrapbook includes clippings and photographs of various charity and social functions that he attended.

Green was occasionally called upon to help plan and organize various social functions. Of special interest are an image of professional golfer Bobby Jones, Wharton Green, and others at a reception honoring Jones that was planned by Green; a photograph of Green at a 1920 Kappa Alpha alumni banquet at the McAlpin Hotel in New York City; a June 10, 1926, letter (TLS) of James J. Walker, mayor, New York City, to Wharton Green, New York City, requesting Green to serve on a reception committee for Lieutenant Commander Richard E. Byrd; a November 25, 1926, letter (TLS) of Lieutenant Commander Richard E. Byrd, Byrd Arctic Expedition, Boston, Massachusetts, to Wharton Green, New York City, declining an invitation; and a June 30, 1930, photograph of Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Wharton Green, and others at a Kappa Alpha luncheon at Barker's Club, New York City.

The leisure time of Wharton Green was often spent at the Baltusrol Golf Club, Springfield, Massachusetts. There are clippings and photographs pertaining to Green's participation in golf games and tournaments at the club throughout his adult life. Green was also active in local community theatre, appearing in plays in the 1920s and 1930s. There are programs and still photographs from these plays in the scrapbook.

The stock-market crash of 1929 and the resulting economic depression of the 1930s had an adverse economic impact on the fortunes of Wharton Green and Company. With his services as a civil engineer in less demand in the private sector, Wharton Green accepted an appointment from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, as regional inspector of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works in 1933. Green was mainly responsible for preventing graft in federally funded public works projects. There are clippings and photographs pertaining to his work as regional inspector.

In 1935, Wharton Green accepted an appointment from Secretary of the Interior Ickes as resident engineer for the construction of the Triborough Bridge and Midtown Hudson [River] Tunnel, both Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works-supervised projects in New York City. The Triborough Bridge project, in particular, was characterized by intense political disputes between members of the Roosevelt administration and New York City officials. The most bitter dispute involved Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes and New York City Commissioner of Parks Robert Moses. Moses adamantly opposed Ickes' decision that Green report directly to New York Public Works Administration director Arthur S. Tuttle instead of directly to Ickes in Washington. He felt that Tuttle's involvement in the project would unnecessarily delay the completion of the Triborough Bridge. Although Green was ultimately required by Ickes to submit progress reports on the Triborough Bridge directly to Tuttle, he continued as resident engineer with no actual reduction in salary until his resignation on November 1, 1936.

The Triborough Bridge was opened in July of 1936, and the Midtown Hudson [River] Tunnel was opened shortly after Wharton Green tendered his resignation. The scrapbook contains clippings, photographs, and other papers and records documenting the construction of the Triborough Bridge and Midtown Hudson [River] Tunnel. Of interest are clippings regarding the controversy over Green's lack of a New York engineering license (which he later obtained); the Ickes-Moses political disputes; a typescript copy of a 1936 construction diary/log kept by Green; correspondence and memoranda of various Roosevelt administration and New York City officials, including Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, and New York Commissioner of Parks Robert Moses; and a photograph of the dedication of the Triborough Bridge by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 11, 1936.

Clara Barton Green supplemented her husband's income during the Depression by successfully marketing candies and other delicacies that she made in the kitchen of her Summit, New Jersey, home. Her business, Southern Confections, specialized in homemade pralines based on an old family recipe. There are clippings and photographs documenting Green's entrepreneurship in the candy business.

Wharton Green joined the staff of the 1939 New York World's Fair in November 1936 as liaison engineer and technical advisor. The scrapbook contains clippings, photographs, and other papers and records pertaining to the fair. Of special interest are images of staff and advisors and the famous trylon and perisphere of the 1939 New York World's Fair.

The culmination of Wharton Green's engineering career occurred when the engineering partnership, Downer, Green, and Carrillo, was awarded the construction contract for the New York International Airport in 1942. The airport, informally known as Idlewild, was built on about 5,000 acres of hydraulically filled land in the borough of Queens and was the world's largest commercial airport when it opened in 1948. Jay Downer served as consulting engineer, Wharton Green as associate engineer, and E. J. Carrillo as field engineer on the mammoth project. The scrapbook contains clippings, photographs, and other papers and records pertaining to the design and construction of Idlewild. Of special interest are the correspondence of New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia and New York Commissioner of Parks Robert Moses concerning Idlewild; an aerial photograph of Idlewild in 1949; and photographs of Jay Downer, Wharton Green, and E. J. Carrillo.

Wharton Green gave generously to his alma mater, Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi, and the African-American boarding school, Piney Woods Country Life School, Rankin County, Mississippi. There are clippings, photographs, and correspondence pertaining to his philanthropy to these two institutions. Of special interest are letters written to Green by Piney Woods president Laurence Clifton Jones and a photograph of the Piney Woods library.

The last years of Wharton Green were spent in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in the company of his children Margaret Green Runyon, Clarissa Green Coddington, and Wharton Green, Jr., and their spouses and several grandchildren. The scrapbook contains clippings and photographs documenting the activities of Green's children and grandchildren.

Green's scrapbook contains clippings and photographs of various Green and Wharton family members of Jackson, Mississippi. Of interest are a photograph of George Stewart Green in Confederate cavalry uniform; a card of Confederate President Jefferson Davis sent to [Attorney] General and Mrs. T. J. Wharton; carte-de-visite photographs of George Stewart Green, Margaret Wharton Green, and Wharton Green; photographs of Green and Wharton family residences in Jackson, Mississippi; and examples of Wharton Green's letters to his mother, Margaret Wharton Green. His scrapbook also contains photographs of various Barton and Kittredge family members of Assumption Parish, Louisiana. Of interest are images of Carroll Barton, Carrie Kittredge Barton, and Clara Barton and scenes from Belclos and Magnolia plantations in Assumption Parish, including sugar-cane harvesting and refining.

 

Series Identification:

Series 1: Scrapbook. 1800s–1900s. 1 bound volume; 1 35 mm, positive microfilm roll (MF Roll # 36579).