Foreword: This is the second post featuring “whiskey men” who made major contributions to their cities, all of them major urban centers — Dallas, Texas; Cincinnati, Ohio, and Patterson, New Jersey. The money these individuals made from the liquor trade, coupled with their community dedication, provided the fuel for their investments and philanthropy that impacted their cities in major positive ways.
When Charles A. Mangold, shown left, died in 1934, the Dallas Morning News devoted part of its front page to his passing. Among tributes, he was hailed as “one of the leaders in developing Dallas from a small village to a major city” subsequent to his arrival in town 47 years earlier. Mangold’s contributions to Dallas included land development, promotion of the arts, an amusement park, two hotels, horse racing, quality livestock and assorted other enterprises.
After being employed in a Lexington, Kentucky distillery, in 1887 Mangold joined a boyhood friend, Joseph Swope in Dallas, then a town of about 35,000. Together they formed the firm of Swope & Mangold, dealers in fine wines, liquors and cigars. Shown here, their headquarters were in a three-story building on Main Street, marked by a large sign. From the beginning, the liquor house was successful. Married and with his business on solid ground, Mangold began exerting seemingly endless energy into making his presence felt in Dallas.
His accomplishments included land development. When Mangold died, one newspaper proclaimed him as the “Man Who Visioned Oak Cliff.” Mangold was one of the first men to dream of “a city west of the river" when Dallas was only a straggling village and Oak Cliff was a wilderness of rocks and trees. Along with other pioneers he helped lay out the first streets and constructing the first homes in Oak Cliff, now a section of Dallas.
A pioneer of the Dallas park system, Mangold was appointed to the first city park board created in 1904. He also was the founder and manager of Lake Cliff Park, a well known summer amusement park on the outskirts of Dallas. Shown here, the park was clustered around a large lagoon offering bathing, boating, carnival rides, 10,000 lights, fireworks displays nightly and other attractions that made Lake Cliff for a time the most prestigious amusement venue in the American Southwest.
Many in Dallas remember Mangold for building hotels. Opened in October 1917, the Hotel Jefferson stood across from the newly opened Dallas Union Station.State of the art for its time, the hotel featured one floor for “the exclusive use of women unattended, no men were quartered on that floor.” Nine years later Mangold would erect a second major hotel, the Cliff Towers Hotel, overlooking the Trinity River. To these contributions can be added his support of the Dallas Opera, co-founding a German language newspaper, and bringing national conventions to Dallas.
When Mangold died in 1934 one newspaper obituary opined: The city of Dallas owes a great deal of its present greatness to the dreams, the work and the money of Mr. Mangold.” Another account acknowledged that his financial means had been generated by years of hard work and intelligent management in the liquor trade.
Born in Piqua, Ohio, in 1849 Jacob Schmidlapp moved to Cincinnati in 1874 and opened a liquor store that proved highly successful. About 1890, with his profits from his liquor business, Jacob organized a group of local business men to found the Union Savings Bank and Trust Company, serving as its chairman and guiding light. The bank met with almost immediate success, with its $500,000 in assets growing to $5 million and paying liberal dividends for most of its existence. Union Trust was accounted as one of the foremost financial institutions of the Midwest. Under Jacob’s leadership, in 1900 the bank erected Cincinnati’s first tall building.
Describing his occupation as”capitalist” to the census taker, Jacob could point to a dozen or more enterprises in which he was a director or trustee. They included the American Surety Company, Equitable Life Insurance Society, The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Degnon Contracting Company, Degnon Realty and Improvement Company, Queens Place Realty Company, Electric Securities Corporation, Montana Power Company, Champion Fibre Company, Monitor Stove and Range Company, and the Export Storage Company. He also sought to improve transit in Cincinnati by offering a plan for a tunnel to facilitate railroad and interurban rail access to downtown.
Jacob is best remembers in Cincinnati today, not as a liquor dealer or banker or wealthy business man, but as an outstanding philanthropist. Following the deaths of his wife and two daughter, Jacob began giving away large portions of his millions. He financed a “magnificent annex” to the Cincinnati Art Museum, built a dormitory for the Cincinnati College of Music, and created an institution for women’s education in the name of daughter Charlotte. He also gave a library and memorial monument to Piqua, his home town. Jacob is said to have been particularly proud of Washington Terrace, Walnut Hills, below, a development of more than 400 homes he built to house working class African-Americans, “in whose welfare he was deeply interested.” Said an observer: “His model homes form the most outstanding effort along this line in the country.” Jacob also was a trustee and contributor to Cincinnati’s McCall Colored Industrial School.
Jacob’s philanthropic works did not end with his death in December 1919. Having given most of his money away during his lifetime, he willed his residual estate, then amounting to about $1 million to create a charitable trust. Known as the Schmidlapp Fund the assets have grown to almost $30 million. The fund has financed scholarships for women, helped reduce preterm births in neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by poor pregnancy results and infant mortality, strengthened health education systems for pregnant women, and assisted children vulnerable to “toxic stress” from unfavorable home environments.
No man has been more important to his community than Irish immigrant James Bell. In 1860 Bell relocated from Boston 330 miles southwest to Paterson, New Jersey, and opened a wholesale and retail wine and liquor business he called the “The James Bell Company, Importers of Wines and Liquors.” By 1870, his net worth according to census records was $90,000, equivalent to almost $2 million today.
Bell’s liquor-fueled wealth also allowed him to become active in the development of Paterson’s neighborhoods and industries, as well as modernizing transportation and other public services. In 1866 Bell organized a land improvement company in the Riverside district of Paterson with the purpose of developing that section of the city. The syndicate under his leadership induced the New Jersey Midlands Railroad — later the New York, Susquehanna & Western — to lay its tracks through Patterson by buying a $15,500 stake in the line and donating land for the tracks.
When Riverside Land Improvement Co. dissolved in 1872, Bell claimed one-fourth of the property it owned, amounting to some 1,000 lots. Of them Bell donated an estimated 90 to bring new industries to Paterson, sometimes erecting the manufacturing facilities. His investments included silk mills and a plant that wove tapestries. According to a biographer: “He had large interests in the Passaic and Orange oil companies and in the Excelsior and Empire oil companies, the latter being the first companies of their kind organized in the country.”
Bell obtained the charter and organized People’s Gas Light Co. of Paterson, credited with reducing the price of gas to consumers from $3.80 to $1.50 per thousand units. He also helped form the Paterson & Little Falls horse trolley company, improving transit to and from that nearby New Jersey town. Wrote a another biographer: “He takes a leading position among the foremost in the advancement of every enterprise that has for its object the general benefit of all classes of the citizens….” After Bell’s death at 59 in 1894, the fruits of his enterprise continued to be enjoyed for decades as Paterson tripled in size from his day to ours.
Note: Longer biographies of each of these individuals can be found elsewhere on this website: Charles Mangold, January 25, 2019; Jacob Schmidlapp, June 18, 2020; and James Bell, September 1, 2020. Three other whiskey men featured for their contributions to building their cities may be found on this site at August 13, 2018.
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