Name/Title
Wyeth Family: In the Good Old Days of 1888, 1950Entry/Object ID
AM1995.1.22Scope and Content
In the Good Old Days of 1888, 1950. The late Huston Wyeth took this picture in 1888 of his summer home, southeast, corner of Thirty-sixth and Frederick boulevard. His son, William Wyeth II, now chairman of the board of Wyeth company, is in the foreground, wearing kilts, at the age of four. The equipage was then highly fashionable, as were the horses, with their docked tails. A livered coachman is on the driver's seat.
Mr. and Mrs. Wyeth and their four children usually spent winters at Wyeth Row, which Mr. Wyeth had built on Faraon at Eleventh, of homes each four stories high. Their own was double the width of each of the other eight. Wyeth row is now the St. Regis apartments.
The Wyeths loved their country home and its ten acres so well that their summer stay twice extended over the winter, too. The children were sent to school in the buckboard, with two horses to plow through the mud of Frederick, then a dirt road.
The place included stables for 8 horses and kennels for 63 Great Danes, Bloodhounds, Pointers, Water Spaniels and English bulldogs. One man was employed full time to care for the dogs, which won many trophies. The brick house burned to the ground September 30, 1899 while Mr. and Mrs. Wyeth were in New York watching the homecoming parade for Admiral Dewey, Spanish-American War hero. Live coals from a cook stove had been placed in a wooden container on the back porch by a servant. Cloverly Farm, now the Catholic Orphanage for boys, was being built across the way, and water was temporarily shut off in the neighborhood to make plumbing connections. Farmers and their wives stopped by to help save the W Wyeth home.
The superintendent of State Hospital No. 2 even sent patients to help. They and the other fire fighters were terrified when cartridges in Mr. Wyeth's room exploded
The Wyeths never rebuilt the house but sold the property to John Van Brunt, who built the house there that was later owned for many years by the late Dr. Frederick Cronkite and is now owned by Mrs. Ida Rosenthal of Kansas City and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Frank Poe.Lexicon
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Thirty-sixth Street & Frederick Avenue, Wyeth Family, Cloverly Farm, Wyeth Family Homes, Fires in St. Joseph, St. Joseph State Hospital No. 2, Frederick AvenueRelationships
Related Person or Organization
Person or Organization
Wyeth, HustonPerson or Organization
Admiral DeweyPerson or Organization
John Van BruntPerson or Organization
Dr. Frederick CronkitePerson or Organization
Ida RosenthalPerson or Organization
Frank PoePerson or Organization
Wyeth, William