The History of "Bozo the Clown," Bozo's Circus from Chicago's very own WGN TV, and Bozos' from other U.S. markets.

Chicago's Bob Bell

The character "Bozo The Clown" was created by Alan W. Livingston and portrayed by Vance DeBar Colvig, professionally known as Pinto Colvig. 

His school friends nicknamed him "Pinto" after his spotted horse named "Pinto" because of his freckled face. The name stuck for his entire life. 

Pinot was known for a children's storytelling record album and an illustrated read-along book set in 1946. He became popular in the late 1940s and was the mascot for Capitol Records.

Three Clowns: Abbott and Costello with Pinto Colvig as Bozo the Clown.

Bozo the Clown's character first appeared on U.S. television in 1949, portrayed by Vance DeBar Colvig Sr. "Pinto."

Bozo the Clown gets the bird from a bird to the enjoyment of the kids in the audience. Pinto Colvig plays the Clown on KTTV's Bozo Circus. (c.1949)

After the creative rights to Bozo were purchased by Larry Harmon in 1956, the character became a familiar franchise across the United States, with local television stations producing their own Bozo shows featuring the character. Harmon bought out his business partners in 1965. He had Bozo's Big Top for syndication to local television markets, not making their own Bozo shows in 1966, while Chicago's Bozo's Circus, which premiered in 1960, went national via cable and satellite in 1978.

Before Willard Scott joined NBC's "Today" show as its weatherman in 1980, his long career included playing Bozo the Clown on children's television.

Performers who have portrayed Bozo, aside from Colvig and Harmon, include Willard Scott (1959–1962), Frank Avruch (1959–1970), Bob Bell (1960–1984), and Joey D'Auria (1984–2001). Bozo TV shows were produced in other countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Greece, Australia, and Thailand.

The Jackson 5 and sister Janet on Bozo's Circus

Bozo appeared in the animated series "Bozo: The World's Most Famous Clown." (1958-1962; 157 episodes) The five-minute animated adventures of Bozo and his adolescent sidekick Butch follow their journey to crazy, wild, and exciting places.

Bozo was created as a character by Livingston, who produced a children's storytelling record album and illustrative read-along book set, the first of its kind, titled Bozo at the Circus for Capitol Records and released in October 1946. Colvig portrayed the character on this and subsequent Bozo read-along records. The albums were trendy, and the character became a mascot for the record company and was later nicknamed "Bozo the Capitol Clown."

This is a promotional film made by Capitol Records to promote records starring "Bozo The Capitol Clown," the character created by Alan W. Livingston. This film would be sent to record and department stores in the early 1950s and played before the appearance of Bozo at live venues.

Many non-Bozo Capitol children's records had a "Bozo Approved" label on the record jacket. In 1948, Capitol and Livingston began setting up royalty arrangements with manufacturers and television stations to use the Bozo character. KTTV in Los Angeles began broadcasting the first show, Bozo's Circus, in 1949, featuring Colvig as Bozo with his blue-and-red costume, big red hair, and whiteface clown makeup on Fridays at 7:30 PM.

In 1956, Larry Harmon, one of several actors hired by Livingston and Capitol Records to portray Bozo at promotional appearances, formed a business partnership and bought the licensing rights (excluding the record-readers) to the character when Livingston briefly left Capitol in 1956. Harmon renamed the character "Bozo, The World's Most Famous Clown" and modified the voice, laugh and costume. He then worked with a wig stylist to get the wing-tipped bright orange style and look of the hair that had previously appeared in Capitol's Bozo comic books. He started his own animation studio and distributed (through Jayark Films Corporation) a series of cartoons (with Harmon as the voice of Bozo) to television stations, along with the rights for each to hire its own live Bozo host, beginning with KTLA-TV in Los Angeles on January 5, 1959, and starring Vance Colvig, Jr., son of the original "Bozo the Clown," Pinto Colvig.

Unlike many other shows on television, "Bozo the Clown" was mostly a franchise as opposed to being syndicated, meaning that local TV stations could put on their own local productions of the show complete with their own Bozo. At its zenith, Harmon's franchise employed more than 200 Bozos, and 183 television stations around the country carried the syndicated television show "Bozo the Clown."

Another successful show that used this model was the fellow children's program Romper Room. Because each market used a different portrayer for the character, the voice and look of each market's Bozo also differed slightly. One example is the voice and laugh of Chicago's WGN-TV Bob Bell, who wore a red costume throughout the first decade of his portrayal.

The wigs for Bozo were originally manufactured through the Hollywood firm Emil Corsillo Inc. The company designed and manufactured toupees and wigs for the entertainment industry. Bozo's headpiece was made from yak hair, which was adhered to a canvas base with a starched burlap interior foundation. The hair was styled and formed, then sprayed with a heavy coat of lacquer to keep its form. From time to time, the headpiece needed freshening and was sent to the Hollywood factory for quick refurbishing. The canvas top would slide over the actor's forehead. Except for the Bozo wigs for WGN-TV Chicago, the eyebrows were permanently painted on the headpiece.

In 1965, Harmon bought out his business partners and became the sole owner of the licensing rights. Thinking that one national show that he wholly owned would be more profitable for his company, Harmon produced 130 of his own half-hour shows from 1965 to 1967 titled Bozo's Big Top, which aired on Boston's WHDH-TV (now WCVB-TV) with Boston's Bozo, Frank Avruch, for syndication in 1966.

Boston's WHDH-TV Channel 5 produced a local weekday version of the Bozo show between 1959 and 1970, and Frank Avruch played the title role. These excerpts are from a 1966 broadcast.

Avruch's portrayal and look of Bozo resembled Harmon's more so than most of the other portrayers at the time. Avruch was enlisted by UNICEF as an international ambassador and was featured in a documentary, Bozo's Adventures in Asia.

The show's distribution network included New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Boston at one point, though most television stations still preferred to continue producing their own versions. 

The most popular local version was Bob Bell and WGN-TV Chicago's Bozo's Circus, which went national via cable and satellite in 1978 and had a waiting list for studio audience reservations that eventually reached ten years.

Bozo's Circus is On The Air!
LOCAL WGN-TV CHICAGO HISTORY
Other titles were: Bozo, Bozo's Circus, and The Bozo Super Sunday Show.

WGN-TV's first incarnation of the show was a live half-hour cartoon showcase titled Bozo, hosted by character actor and staff announcer Bob Bell in the title role performing comedy bits between cartoons, weekdays at noon for six-and-a-half months beginning June 20, 1960. After a short hiatus to facilitate WGN-TV's move from Tribune Tower in downtown Chicago to the city's northwest side, the show was relaunched in an expanded one-hour format as Bozo's Circus, which premiered at noon on September 11, 1961. The live show featured Bell as Bozo (although he did not perform on the first telecast), host Ned Locke as "Ringmaster Ned," a 13-piece orchestra, comedy sketches, circus acts, cartoons, games, and prizes before a 200+ studio audience.

1963 Photo postcard of Oliver O. Oliver (Ray Rayner), Bozo the Clown (Bob Bell), Sandy the Clown (Don Sandburg), and Ringmaster Ned (Ned Locke) on WGN-TV Bozo's Circus

In the early months of the series, a respected English acrobatic clown, "Wimpey" (played by Bertram William Hiles), worked on the show, providing some legitimate circus background and performing opposite Bell's Bozo in comedy sketches. Hiles continued to make periodic guest appearances on the show into the mid-1960s.

In October 1961, Don Sandburg joined the show as producer and principal sketch writer and also appeared as the mute clown "Sandy the Tramp," a character partly inspired by Harpo Marx. By November 1961, another eventual Chicago television legend, actor Ray Rayner (complete biography), joined the show's cast as "Oliver O. Oliver," a country bumpkin from Puff Bluff, Kentucky. 

Rayner was hosting WGN-TV's Dick Tracy Show (which also premiered the same day as Bozo's Circus) and later replaced Dick Coughlan as host of Breakfast with Bugs Bunny, retitled Ray Rayner and His Friends. WGN musical director Bob Trendler led the WGN Orchestra, dubbed the "Big Top Band."

Ray Rayner was the first.
NATIONAL "SPEAKING" TV
Ronald McDonald. 1968-69.

SIDEBAR 

Ronald McDonald - Immediately following Willard Scott's three-year-run as WRC-TV Washington, D.C.'s Bozo, the show's sponsors, McDonald's drive-in restaurant franchisees John Gibson and Oscar Goldstein (Gee Gee Distributing Corporation), hired Scott to portray "Ronald McDonald, the Hamburger-Happy Clown" for their local commercials on the character's first three television 'spots.' McDonald's replaced Scott with other actors for their national commercials, and the character's costume was changed.

One of them was Ray Rayner (Oliver O. Oliver on WGN-TV's Bozo's Circus), who appeared in McDonald's national ads in 1968. In the mid-1960s, Andy Amyx, performing as Bozo on Jacksonville, Florida, television station WFGA, was hired to periodically do local appearances of Ronald McDonald.  Andy recalls having to return the wardrobe to the agency after each performance.

Unused ticket and "visit" pin for Bozo's Circus broadcast of July 2, 1964. The ticket came with an "I Visited Bozo's Circus" pin attached; the marks where the pin was attached to it can be seen on the image. There was once an 8 to 10-year wait for show tickets.

The "Grand Prize Game" was created by Sandburg, where the Magic Arrows selected a boy and girl from the studio audience to toss a ping-pong ball into a series of successively numbered buckets until they missed. As you got closer to bucket number six, each bucket had more expensive prizes. 

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The Magic Arrows were replaced by the Bozoputer, a random number generator.

If they made the winning toss into the sixth bucket, they (and an "at-home player") received a cash prize, a bike, and, in later years, a trip. For many years, the cash prize for Bucket #6 was a progressive jackpot growing by one "silver dollar" each day "until someone wins them all." The Grand Prize Game became so popular Larry Harmon, who purchased the rights to the Bozo the Clown character, later adapted it for other Bozo shows (as "Bozo Buckets" to some and "Bucket Bonanza" to others) and also licensed home and coin-operated versions.

In October 1968, Bell was hospitalized for a brain aneurysm and was absent from the show for several months. Meanwhile, Sandburg resolved to leave the show for the West Coast but stayed longer while Bell recuperated. To pick up the slack, WGN-TV floor manager Richard Shiloh Lubbers appeared as "Monty Melvin," named after a schoolmate of Sandburg's, while WGN Garfield Goose and Friends, and Ray Rayner and His Friends, puppeteer Roy Brown created a new character, "Cooky the Cook." Sandburg left the show in January 1969, and Bell returned in March. Lubbers also left, with Brown staying on as a permanent cast member.

Magician Marshall Brodien demonstrates magic tricks at the upstairs Baer's Treasure Chest's Professional Magic Shop.

Magician Marshall Brodien demonstrated and sold magic tricks to professional magicians at The Magic Center in the "Baer's Treasure Chest" at 19 West Randolph Street, Chicago, in the early 1960s. Brodien began making semi-regular guest appearances, frequently interacting with the clowns. He began appearing as a wizard character in an Arabian Nights-inspired costume in 1968. By the early 1970s, he evolved into "Wizzo the Wizard."

From 1960 until 1970, Bozo appeared in a red costume. Larry Harmon, the owner of Bozo's character license, insisted Bozo wear a blue costume. Harmon did not have his way regarding the costume's color in Chicago until Don Sandburg, "Bozo's Circus" producer, writer and 'Sandy the Tramp' from 1961 to 1969, moved to California.

A primetime version titled 'Big Top' was seen from September through January on Wednesday nights in 1965 through 1967.

Ray Rayner left Bozo's Circus in 1971 and was briefly replaced by actor Pat Tobin as Oliver's cousin "Elrod T. Potter" and then by magician John Thompson (an acquaintance of Roy Brown's and Marshall Brodien's) as "Clod Hopper." (Tobin previously had played Bozo on KSOO-TV in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Thompson has appeared on A&E's Criss Angel Mindfreak.) Rayner periodically returned to guest-host in his morning show's jumpsuit as "Mr. Ray" when Ned Locke was absent. The show had its 500,000th visitor in the same year. 

Left to Right; Clod Hopper (1972-1973), Cooky (1968–1994), Ray Rayner (Oliver O. Oliver 1961–1971), and Bozo. Ray Rayner was still helping out Bozo's Circus after his character ended in 1972.

By 1973, WGN gave up on Thompson and increased Brodien's appearances as Wizzo. That same year, the National Association of Broadcasters issued an edict forbidding the practice of children's TV show hosts doubling as pitchmen for products. This resulted in significant cutbacks to children's show production budgets.

In 1975, Bob Trendler retired from television, and his Big Top Band was reduced to a three-piece band led by Tom Fitzsimmons. Locke also retired from television in 1976 and was replaced by Frazier Thomas, host of WGN's Family Classics and Garfield Goose and Friends. At that point, Garfield Goose and Friends ended its 24-year run on Chicago television with the puppets moving to a segment on Bozo's Circus. As the storyline went, Gar "bought" Bozo's Circus from the retiring Ringmaster Ned and appointed "Prime Minister" Thomas as the new Circus Manager. In 1978, when WGN-TV became a national superstation on cable and satellite through what is now WGN America, the show gained more of a national following.

Wizzo and Bozo in the late 70s.

In 1979, Bozo's Circus added "TV Powww!" where those at home could play a video game by phone. How did this work?[1] 

TV Powww!Withh Frances Eden of WKPT (c.1980)

By 1980, Chicago's public schools stopped allowing students to go home for lunch, and Ray Rayner announced his imminent retirement from his morning show and Chicago television. The show stopped issuing tickets; the wait to be part of the audience was eight years long.

The following year, beginning a summer hiatus and airing taped shows pushed the ticket wait time back to ten years. On August 11, 1980, Bozo's Circus was renamed "The Bozo Show" and moved to weekdays at 8:00 AM, on tape, immediately following Ray Rayner and His Friends. On January 26, 1981, The Bozo Show replaced Ray Rayner and His Friends at 7:00 AM. The program expanded to 90 minutes, the circus acts and Garfield Goose and Friends puppets were dropped, and Cuddly Dudley (a puppet on Ray Rayner and His Friends voiced and operated by Roy Brown) and more cartoons were added. In 1983, Pat Hurley from ABC-TV's "Kids Are People Too" joined the cast as himself, interviewing kids in the studio audience and periodically participating in sketches.

On May 1, 1984, Larry Harmon, as Bozo the Clown, announced his write-in candidacy for President of the United States. That afternoon, dressed as Bozo, he arrived at Columbia University in a 1977 Cadillac limousine accompanied by "secret service" men wearing suits, sunglasses, and red clown noses.

The college punk band "Nasty Bozos '84" hosted the event and performed during the announcement. Earlier that day, Bozo creator Larry Harmon appeared on the Today Show, explaining that he went into children's television to become a "doctor of humor, love, peace, and understanding in this world." He further described his decision to run for President, against Ronald Reagan (R) and Walter Mondale (D), as a response to media calls to "put the real Bozo in the White House." It was reported that two assassination attempts were made on Bozo's life, but maybe just comedy. Harmon was never at a loss for ideas regarding promoting Bozo. Arizona was the only state to report the number of votes for Bozo, which turned out to be only 21 write-in votes.

The most significant change occurred in 1984 with the retirement of Bob Bell, with the show still the most-watched in its timeslot and a ten-year wait for studio audience reservations. After a nationwide search, Bell was replaced by actor Joey D'Auria, who would play the role of Bozo for the next 17 years.

Bob Bell sadly retired from his position as Bozo in 1984, and with that decision, an end of a wonderful era in Chicago Broadcasting occurred. An incredible special aired on WGN-TV entitled "Bob Bell: The Man Behind The Makeup" gave insight into a man we knew very little about.

In 1985, Frazier Thomas died, and Hurley filled in as host for the final six shows that season, stepping into a semi-authority character. In 1987, Hurley was dropped, and the show's timeslot returned to 60 minutes. In 1987, a synthesizer, played by "Professor Andy" (musician/actor Andy Mitran), replaced the three-piece Big Top Band.

Roy Brown began suffering heart-related problems and was absent from the show for an extended period during the 1991–92 season. This coincided with the show's 30th anniversary and a reunion special that included Don Sandburg as Sandy, who also filled in for Cooky for the first two weeks that season. Actor Adrian Zmed (best known from ABC-TV's TJ Hooker), a childhood fan of Bozo's Circus and former Grand Prize Game contestant, also appeared on the special and portrayed himself as a "Rookie Clown" for the following two weeks. Actor Michael Immel then joined the show as "Spiffy" (Spifford Q. Fahrquahrrr). Brown returned in January 1992, initially on a part-time basis but suffered additional health setbacks and took another extended leave of absence in the fall of 1993. 

However, Brown's presence on the show remained, as previously aired segments as Cooky and Cuddly Dudley were incorporated until 1994, when he and Marshall Brodien retired from television. 

Later that year, WGN management decided to get out of the weekday children's television business and buried The Bozo Show in an early Sunday timeslot as The Bozo Super Sunday Show on September 11, 1994.

WGN's decision to relegate the program to Sundays coincided with the launch of the WGN Morning News (which debuted five days earlier), a weekday morning newscast initially launched as a one-hour program. Moving the Bozo Show resulted in the cancellation of WGN's 2-year-old Sunday morning newscast, whose 8 AM timeslot went to Bozo.

Immel was replaced by Robin Eurich as "Rusty the Handyman," Michele Gregory as "Tunia," and Cathy Schenkelberg as "Pepper." In 1996, Schenkelberg was dropped. The show suffered another blow in 1997 when its format became educational following a Federal Communications Commission mandate requiring broadcast television stations to air at least three hours of educational children's programs per week. In 1998, Michele Gregory left the cast following more budget cuts.

In 2001, station management controversially ended production, citing increased competition from newer children's cable channels. The final taping, a 90-minute primetime special titled Bozo: 40 Years of Fun!, was taped on June 12, 2001, and aired on July 14, 2001. It was the only Bozo show that remained on television by this time. The special featured Joey D'Auria as Bozo, Robin Eurich as Rusty, Andy Mitran as Professor Andy, Marshall Brodien as Wizzo and Don Sandburg as Sandy. Also present at the last show were Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, who performed, and Bob Bell's family. Many costumes and props are on display at The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Reruns of The Bozo Super Sunday Show aired until August 26, 2001. Bozo returned to television on December 24, 2005, in a two-hour retrospective titled Bozo, Gar & Ray: WGN TV Classics. The primetime premiere was #1 in the Chicago market and continues to be rebroadcast and streamed live online annually during the holiday season.

Bozo also returned to Chicago's parade scene and the WGN-TV float in 2008 as the station celebrated its 60th anniversary. He also appeared in a 2008 public service announcement alerting WGN-TV analog viewers about the upcoming switch to digital television. Bozo was played by WGN-TV staff member George Pappas. Since then, Bozo continues to appear annually in Chicago's biggest parades.

Few episodes from the show's first two decades survive; although some were recorded to videotape for delayed broadcasts, the tapes were reused and eventually discarded. In 2012, a vintage tape was located on the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection website archive list by Rick Klein of The Museum of Classic Chicago Television, containing material from two 1971 episodes. WGN reacquired the tape and created a new special entitled "Bozo's Circus: The Lost Tape," which aired in December 2012.

On October 6, 2018, Don Sandburg, Bozo's Circus producer, writer, and the last surviving original cast member, passed away at 87. Four months later, WGN-TV paid tribute to Sandburg and the rest of the original cast with a two-hour special titled "Bozo's Circus: The 1960s."

 

"WHO'S YOUR FAVORITE CLOWN?"

URBAN MYTH: Krusty the Clown was based on Bozo. 

MYTH BUSTED: Krusty the Clown was created by cartoonist Matt Groening and partially inspired by Rusty Nails, a television clown from Groening's hometown of Portland, Oregon. He was designed to look like Homer Simpson with clown makeup, with the original idea being that Bart worships a television clown who was actually his own father in disguise. Bob Bell (1960-1984), Bozo the Clown, whose voice was later the pattern for that of Krusty the Clown. Krusty made his television debut on January 15, 1989, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "The Krusty the Clown Show." Krusty then was on The Simpsons sitcom, which began on December 17, 1989.

WGN-TV CHICAGO BOZO ACTORS AND YEARS

 Character                  Actor                         Years
Bozo the Clown             Bob Bell                     1960–1984
Oliver O. Oliver Ray Rayner                   1961–1971
Sandy                    Don Sandburg         1961–1969
Ringmaster Ned             Ned Locke                     1961–1976
Mr. Bob                  Bob Trendler                  1961–1975
Cooky                    Roy Brown                     1968–1994
Wizzo                    Marshall Brodien               1968–1994
Elrod T. Potter Pat Tobin                     1971–1972
Clod Hopper               John Thompson                  1972–1973
Frazier Thomas Himself                      1976–1985
Pat Hurley                Himself                      1983–1987
Bozo the Clown             Joey D'Auria                  1984–2001
Professor Andy Andy Mitran                   1987–2001
Spiffy                   Michael Immel       1991–1994
Rusty                    Robin Eurich                  1994–2001
Pepper                   Cathy Schenkelberg             1994–1996
Tunia                    Michele Gregory                1994–1998

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

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[1] TV POWWW! It was a franchised television game show format in which home viewers controlled a video game via telephone in hopes of winning prizes.

TV Powww!With Frances Eden of WKPT (c.1980)

The TV POWWW format, produced and distributed by Florida syndicator Marvin Kempner, debuted in 1978 on Los Angeles station KABC-TV as part of A.M. Los Angeles, and by the start of the next decade, was seen on 79 local television stations (including national superstation WGN as part of Bozo's Circus) in the United States, as well as several foreign broadcasters. While most stations had dropped TV POWWW by the mid-1980s, stations in Australia and Italy were still using it as late as 1990.

Stations were initially supplied with games for the Fairchild Channel F console, but following Fairchild's withdrawal from the home video game market, Intellivision games were used. Kempner unsuccessfully attempted to interest both Nintendo and Sega in a TV POWWW revival.

While the underlying technology was standardized across participating stations, TV POWWW's presentation format varied from market to market. Many presented TV POWWW as a series of segments that ran during the commercial breaks of television programming (a la Dialing for Dollars), while some (such as KTTV in Los Angeles) presented TV POWWW as a standalone program.

Gameplay

In the video game being featured, the at-home player would give directions over the phone while watching the game on their home screen. When the viewer determined that the weapon was aiming at the target, they said, "Pow!" after which that weapon would activate.

Accounts vary as to what kind of controller technology was involved. Some sources state that the gaming consoles sent to the stations were modified for voice activation. However, a 2008 WPIX station retrospective claimed that for the station's version, where the player said "Pix" (Pron: picks), an employee in the control room manually hit the fire button when the caller indicated a shot.

One of the pitfalls of the gameplay was that, due to broadcasting technicalities, there was a significant lag in the transmission of a television signal. The player would experience this lag when playing at home, which likely made playing the game somewhat more difficult. 

The Chicago River Flood of 1992.

On April 13, 1992, the Chicago River mysteriously sprung an underground leak that flooded subways and basements across the Chicago Loop with up to 40 feet of fishy water. People were evacuated, and the power went off while a mass of debris quietly began swirling in the river, directly above a breach in Chicago’s historic underground freight railway network.

Lying 40 feet underground, the railway network once linked four public stations and many large businesses in The Loop. Over the years, the tunnels supplied telecommunications, delivered coal, transported mail, and took excavation debris to the shore of Lake Michigan, where it was used to create the land under Grant Park, Soldier Field and McCormick Place.

In the early twentieth century, buildings were constructed with deep foundations to access these handy waterproofed tunnels directly (and possibly illegally).

Unfortunately, after the tunnels were abandoned in 1959, the redundant access shafts were mostly bricked up and forgotten about. At least, this was the case until the early hours of the 13th when the basements of City Hall, The Merchandise Mart, Chicago Hilton and Towers, the Federal Reserve Bank, and many other business district buildings and subways began to flood.

It was decided that the breached section of the tunnel underneath the river had been slowly deteriorating under pressure created by a piling being driven too close to the tunnel wall during remedial work on the Kinzie Street Bridge back in 1991. 

Pumping dirty river water from Marshall Field's flooded basement.

Allegedly, urban explorers had noticed what was initially a small leak inside the tunnel, which had been reported during a cable inspection. There was a delay in deciding who would fix it.

Chicago’s resulting flood (or ‘leak‘ as it was called for insurance purposes) caused around $1.9 billion worth of damage. After attempting to close the breach by dropping rocks from above, the tunnels were drained, drilled, and plugged. To prevent further problems, the section underneath the river was eventually sealed off from the rest of the network, and the tunnels have since been secured after a terrorist threat.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lydia Moss Bradley, Philanthropist and Founder of Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.

Lydia Moss Bradley (1816–1908)

Lydia Moss Bradley was a wealthy philanthropist famous for her humanitarian works in Illinois and the independent management of her wealth. A pioneer in business and philanthropy, she founded Bradley Polytechnic Institute (now Bradley University) in 1897. Bradley and her accomplishments would be notable in any age, but to achieve all of this as an independent woman in the 19th century makes her simply amazing.

Lydia Moss was born in Vevay, Indiana, on July 31, 1816, the daughter of Zeally and Jennett Glasscock Moss. Prior to Lydia’s birth, Zeally Moss owned a plantation in Kentucky but decided that he did not want to make a living based on slavery. He reportedly “gave the place rent-free to his Negroes to work out their own living, while he crossed over into free territory to make his home and rear his family.” 

Lydia Moss Bradley believed that industriousness was required of all able-bodied members of a community. Despite her limited education – in a neighbor’s kitchen with no heat, few books and handmade quill pens – Lydia learned the practical things of life and developed the strong business sense that would serve her so well as an adult.

Lydia’s father gave a young colt that had lost its mother to his daughter to raise. After raising enough money for a saddle and bridle and enjoying the horse as the only access to social life in those days, she sold it in exchange for 40 acres of forested land. She cleared the land sold the timber and met Tobias Bradley, who was running the sawmill where her timber was processed.

Marriage and Family
On May 11, 1837, at age 31, Lydia married Tobias Bradley, and the newlyweds initially lived with her parents in Vevay. Their first child, Rebecca, was born January 20, 1839. That same year, Zeally Moss died, leaving the family farm to Lydia. Lydia gave birth to their second daughter, Clarissa, on October 26, 1843, but Rebecca died on September 2, 1845.

In 1847, Lydia and her family, including her mother, moved to Peoria, Illinois, to join her brother William Moss. With the proceeds from the sale of their land holdings in Vevay, the Bradleys purchased a large tract of land in Peoria, which was in its early development and an excellent place for Tobias Bradley and William Moss to prosper in business ventures.

Over the next three decades, the Bradleys prospered in real estate and banking. In the early days, Lydia was the housewife and mother, while Tobias became a leading businessman with many entrepreneurial endeavors. He was one of the founders of First National Bank in Peoria and helped establish the first public library there.

Unfortunately, the Bradleys suffered the deaths of five of their six children in rapid succession. Daughter Rebecca had died in 1845 before the move to Illinois, while daughter Clarissa and son Tobias Moss (born April 28, 1847) died during the first year at Peoria. Daughter Mary lived less than a year, dying on April 25, 1852, and son William died on August 25, 1855, at the age of two. Daughter Laura (born April 24, 1849) lived longer than any of the other children, dying in 1864 at the age of fourteen.

During these same difficult years, in business dealings, the Bradleys were charmed and soon became quite wealthy. In the early days, Tobias ran another sawmill, captained the steamboat Avalanche owned by William Moss, and joined Moss in a distilling business, which ran successfully for many years. Tobias also continued to purchase land and bought stock in new companies.

After losing all of their children, the Bradleys began thinking about constructing a monument to their deceased children. They discussed the idea of an orphanage, but Lydia later decided that such institutions were often ill-equipped to help young people acquire the skills needed to become independent, which was her main interest.

Then came the final blow in 1867 when Tobias Bradley was killed in a carriage accident at age 56. Rather than becoming absorbed in her own grief and allowing herself to be protected by her wealth, Lydia took over the management of her estate, which was valued at $500,000. Within ten years, the estate doubled to over $1 million and then doubled again.

At the time of his death, Tobias Bradley was the President of the First National Bank of Peoria. Lydia inherited the stock which he owned in the bank and became a member of the Board of Directors. 

Lydia sits for a photograph with the First National Bank in Peoria Board of Trustees, the first female member of a national bank board in America.

For twenty-five of the nearly thirty-four years she served as a board member, she held the position of Director. Although it is difficult to determine if any other women in the country held similar positions, it is possible that she was the first female member of a national bank board in the United States.

In 1869, just before marrying Edward Clark, Lydia Moss Bradley became the first American woman to draft a prenuptial agreement to protect her assets. She was savvy enough be careful with her wealth and was unwilling to place herself in a position of vulnerability. The agreement, which Clark signed, declared that if the marriage did not last, each would retain their individual holdings. Bradley and Clark divorced in 1873.

Career in Philanthropy
In Peoria, Bradley gave land to the Society of St. Francis to build a hospital, now known as the OSF St. Francis Medical Center. In 1884, she built the Bradley Home for Aged Women to care for widowed and childless women and funded the construction of the Universalist church. She also donated over 100 acres of land to the City of Peoria for a park, later named in memory of her daughter Laura.

Lydia Moss Bradley finally decided that she wanted to establish a place of higher learning as a lasting memorial to her husband and children. She began investigating schools as models for the one she planned to endow through her will. In 1877, Bradley visited Rose Polytechnic Institute in Indiana, which offered degrees in engineering and the sciences, because she wanted to give young people “the most practical assistance at the best time of their lives to make them independent, self-supporting, useful men and women.”

During her research, Bradley learned that the cost of such a school would be far greater than the value of her estate, so she decided to continue her business efforts in order to fully endow a school of the highest standards. One of the ways in which she made such a substantial increase in her wealth was her ability to improve the quality of land.

She owned 680 acres of Manito Marsh; she had the land drained and built farm buildings and fences, and began cultivating the land for farming, but the crops did poorly. When the crops failed to improve over time, she sent samples of the soil to Champaign for analysis. The soil was very rich, but it lacked potash. By amending the soil, Bradley’s farms became successful.

The farmers working her land benefitted, the land became useful, neighboring farmers followed suit and improved their own crops, and the value of the land increased dramatically. Bradley had purchased this marshland for $10 per acre, and when the crops became successful, the lots sold for up to $140 per acre.

Bradley was a strong, independent woman at a time when women were still expected to be submissive, but her willingness to seek out experts to aid her in her decision-making was perhaps the greatest key to her success. In 1885, after nearly doubling the value of the estate left to her by her husband, she hired W.W. Hammond as her business manager, starting a relationship that lasted until her death and beyond – Hammond managed the affairs of Bradley’s school until his own death in 1920.

Hiring Hammond was a wise decision because he was not only astute in business matters, he was also a lawyer and was subsequently able to protect her interests. Bradley met with Hammond every morning at her home, an imposing brick residence Tobias Bradley built in 1858. Every Sunday, she took a carriage ride to Springdale Cemetery and placed flowers from her own gardens on the graves of her deceased loved ones.

The historic Lydia Moss Bradley house on Moss Avenue in Peoria, Illinois.

Bradley Polytechnic Institute
As a first step toward her goal of establishing a school, in 1892 Bradley purchased a controlling interest in Parsons Horological School in LaPorte, Indiana, the first school for watchmakers in America, and moved it to Peoria with its 100 students, full staff of teachers and all. She specified in her will that the school should be expanded after her death to include a classical education as well as industrial arts and home economics:

...it being the first object of this Institution to furnish its students with the means of living an independent, industrious and useful life by the aid of a practical knowledge of the useful arts and sciences.

One of the best pieces of advice Bradley received came from William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago in October 1896. After looking over her finances he assured her she had sufficient funds, and soon convinced her to move ahead with her plans and establish the school during her lifetime.

Bradley Horology Hall: dedicated on October 8, 1897.
Bradley Polytechnic Institute, now Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois.

Bradley Polytechnic Institute was chartered on November 13, 1896. Mrs. Bradley provided 17.5 acres of land, $170,000 for buildings, equipment and a library, and $30,000 per year for operating expenses. On April 10, 1897, ground was broken for Bradley Hall, and work moved ahead quickly. With 14 faculty and 150 students, classes began in Bradley Hall on October 4, 1897 – with 500 workers still hammering away.

Bradley Hall and Horological School, 1906.

The Chicago Times Herald article about Mrs. Bradley at the school’s dedication on October 8, 1897, stated:

...in the few sentences she uttered were compressed the ideals she had cherished for half a century. She said she hoped the institute would be a real benefit to mankind; that it would be the means of making better men and women; that boys and girls would find in the new institution of learning an incentive to intellectual life was her ardent wish.

Later Years
Bradley knew that to safeguard her initial plans for the Bradley Polytechnic Institute, she could not leave many issues open to interpretation. She purposely placed a majority of Peorians on the board. She had the ratio of residents written into the charter to make certain the school always served the interests of the community.

Establishing the school during her lifetime gave Lydia Moss Bradley the enormous emotional satisfaction of seeing the creation brought about by her efforts. All records indicate that she rarely missed special events at the Institute. She is said to have entertained students in her kitchen and garden some afternoons, and she is almost always reported to have been an honored guest on founder’s days and graduations.

In many speeches and memorial addresses after her death, those who knew her felt that the Institute had a profound effect on Bradley’s happiness in her later years. Students, faculty and trustees were also glad that they had the opportunity to express their appreciation to their school’s founder while she lived. Without that satisfaction, she would have had far less reason to live such a long and active life.

Pleased with its progress, Mrs. Bradley transferred to the school the rest of her estate, including nearly 1,000 different pieces of property, reserving its use and profits during her lifetime. At Founder’s Day in 1906, she announced an additional gift to build Hewitt Gymnasium, now Hartmann Center for the Performing Arts.

The Hewitt Gymnasium, 1912.

By 1899, the Institute had expanded to accommodate nearly 500 pupils, about equally divided between men and women. It offered courses in biology, chemistry, food work, sewing, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, history, manual arts, drawing, mathematics and physics.

Lydia Moss Bradley at her home on Moss Avenue in Peoria, Illinois.

Lydia Moss Bradley developed deep convictions on work, skill, thrift and economy. Although her family had become quite prosperous in land holdings during her childhood, every member of the family worked on the farm. Even in her later years as one of the wealthiest citizens in the Peoria area, business manager W. W. Hammond reported:

"Mrs. Bradley never forgot how to work, and until within a short time of her death still made her own butter, raised her own eggs, salted down her own meat and tried out her own lard. She would not have considered herself a good housekeeper had she not done so. The housewife of those times was expected to stock the larder with meats and fruits, to spin the yarn, make the clothing, bedding and carpets, and to prepare food in plenty for all who chanced to be present when meal time came round. All these things Mrs. Bradley did."

Lydia Moss Bradley died on January 16, 1908, at age 91, and is buried at Springdale Cemetery and Mausoleum, Peoria, Illinois.

The Institute continued to grow and develop to meet the educational needs of the region. It became a four-year college offering bachelor’s degrees in 1920 and a full university with graduate programs in 1946 when it was renamed Bradley University. Today, it is a fully accredited institution that provides education in engineering, business, communication, teacher education, nursing, physical therapy, fine arts and the liberal arts and sciences.

In 1998, Bradley was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Story of the "Spirit of Progress" Statue atop the Montgomery Ward Catalog House.

Caduceus

Many Chicagoans had noticed the bronze statue on top of the old Montgomery Ward warehouse and administrative building at 600 West Chicago Avenue over the years.

It was Ward’s time-honored symbol, "The Spirit of Progress," a female figure poised on her left foot, holding a torch high in her right hand and a caduceus, a winged staff with two snakes wrapped around it, an ancient symbol of commerce, in the other, while she leans forward into the wind as though about to flight.

Actually, Spirit is the third of three similar statues which have graced a number of prominent Chicago buildings. The first, a gilded weather vane of Diana, goddess of the hunt, stood on the Agriculture Building at Chicago's 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The second, Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce, also a gilded weather vane, was made for Montgomery Ward’s Michigan Avenue Tower Building in 1900. The third and final reincarnation was created for the Montgomery Ward Administration Building on Chicago Avenue in 1928 and christened The Spirit of Progress.

Diana I and II by Augustus Saint-Gaudens at the W. H. Mullins shop in Salem, Ohio.

Diana, Goddess of the Hunt
In 1891, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt was commissioned by New York’s Madison Square Garden’s architect, Stanford White to design a weather vane for the famous hall. He asked his friend, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to design it. The tower at MSG was modeled after La Giralda, the Bell Tower in Granada, Spain which also sported a weather vane called Faith.

Diana was fabricated at the W. H. Mullins shop in Salem, Ohio, she was 18 feet tall and weighed 1,800 pounds, yet she was perfectly balanced and could move gracefully with a light wind. She was made of many individually formed sections of 22-ounce sheet copper which were first machine-hammered over dies and then riveted together. Inside, the thin-skinned copper figure rested on a wrought-iron skeleton, the same method that was used to construct the Statue of Liberty in 1883. Diana was covered with gold leaf.

Unfortunately, Diana did not rotate as planned because of its immense weight. Furthermore, both White and Saint-Gaudens realized that the gilded figure was somewhat awkward looking and was disproportionately large for the Madison Square Garden building. So the figure was removed about a year after its debut and a smaller, 13 foot Diana was installed. Madison Square Garden was demolished in 1925 and Diana II was placed in storage, awaiting the completion of a new tower promised by New York University. But NYU could not raise the money to build.

In 1932, the Art Museum’s dynamic young director, Fiske Kimball, persuaded the New York Life Insurance Co., Diana’s owner, to give the sculpture to the Museum of Art in Philadelphia.

She was installed in 1932 at the top of the stairwell.

Diana I (left) and Diana II (right) on top of Madison Square Garden.

Charles McKim, the architect for the Agriculture Building at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, who was about to begin construction, thought that Diana I would be a perfect piece to top the dome. The exposition officials agreed, and in early 1892 the statue was purchased for $2,500 and sent to Mullins for refurbishing. Once in place, Diana I soon won the admiration of many fairgoers because of her beauty and her prominent position overlooking the Court of Honor in the heart of the exposition.

Diana I on top of the Agriculture Building during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago.

At first, it seemed that Diana I was destroyed by a fire that swept the fairgrounds on January 9, 1894, as most of the structure was left in ruins. Fortunately, the Chicago Tribune reported the following day:

The statue of Diana was not damaged as she had been removed about six weeks ago to the Columbian Museum of Chicago.

This was not the whole story. Executives from Montgomery Ward toured the Agriculture Building and bought the statue and had it stored in the Columbian Museum (Fine Arts Building, now the Museum of Science & Industry) until their Tower Headquarters was built in 1899. It is uncertain whether Diana was sent back to Mullins and was refurbished or if a new statue was made from a new design.

The Statue, "Diana, Goddess of the Hunt," erected in front of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1909.

Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce
Architects for the new Ward Tower, Richard E. Schmidt, and Hugh Garden envisioned a statue-weather vane on top of their new structure. Schmidt hired John Massey Rhind a Scottish sculptor to design the final statue. For some reason, however, the statue of Progress is not mentioned in articles of his work, nor does it appear in the lengthy obituary published in a London newspaper on October 22, 1956. The reason for this might well be that Rhind only designed alterations to transform Diana, therefore he would not have been the sole creator of Progress.

The reincarnated weather vane was installed on the top of Montgomery Ward’s new Michigan Avenue tower headquarters on October 21, 1900. It was dubbed Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce by the Inter-Ocean.

Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce on top of the Montgomery Ward Tower on Michigan Avenue. The photo on the left was taken during the dismantling in 1947.

The Chicago Tribune had acclaimed the new statue as “rivaling in beauty New York’s famous ‘Diana.'” And small wonder; with her torch held high some 390 feet above the street. the gleaming figure of Progress was visible over most of the city and far out into Lake Michigan. Lit by four electric beacons with 1,000 candlepower each, Progress actually did serve as a beacon in at least one instance. On September 18, 1918, Captain Ben Lipsner used these lights to guide his plane into Grant Park after making the first airmail flight between New York City and Chicago, in 9 hours and 13 minutes of stormy weather.

In 1908 Ward’s sold the Tower Building and moved to a more spacious headquarters on West Chicago Avenue. Although the Michigan Avenue building still stands, its 125-foot tower portion was removed in 1947 after being judged structurally unsafe. As for Progress, she also had to come down. On Saturday, April 26, 1947, workmen of the Speedway Wrecking Company erected a scaffold around the statue and began to dismantle her. On July 20, 1947, the Chicago Tribune, calling the figure “Diana,” reported that:

"The statue was cut into about 30 pieces before it was lowered. Most of the statue is at the company’s office, but some parts have been claimed by Chicagoans. Diana’s arm with outstretched spear came off at the shoulder, the head came off in one piece, and one leg below the knee. The requests for pieces of the metal for souvenirs was amazing. Some old-timers want the metal to make into ash trays, and others just want pieces of it as souvenirs. One of Chicago’s prominent citizens has, for some reason he kept to himself, requested the bust."

Progress’ head was auctioned off on November 4, 2014
at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.

The Spirit of Progress
In 1922, the year of Ward’s fiftieth anniversary, Theodore F. Merseles, President of Ward’s, presented the widows of A. Montgomery Ward and George R. Thorne with 15-inch bronze replicas of the Progress statue. The disposition of Mrs. Ward’s figurine is not known, but Mrs. Thorne’s statue was passed on to her great-grandson, Charles H. Thorne II.

In 1928, when construction had started on a new Administration Building on Chicago Avenue, Mersele’s successor, George B. Everitt, felt that the building should have a statue. He commissioned an artist to design one, and in September 1929 The Spirit of Progress was placed atop the white stuccoed Art Deco tower.

Once completed, Spirit became the new corporate symbol, and the company commissioned copies to place on other Montgomery Ward buildings across the country. But President Everitt’s successor, Sewell Avery, was not quite taken to her. After he became president in 1952 Avery sought to have her removed. However, he dropped the plan when he found that it would cost $6,000 to dismantle her.

LEFT: Progress Lighting the Way for Commerce       RIGHT: Spirit of Progress

For years the identity of the artist was unknown, making the story of Spirit’s origin as much as a mystery as that of Progress. However, it is probable that Spirit was the work of sculpture-architect Joseph Conradi. In a letter to his grand-daughter, Grace Conradi Anderson of Addison, Illinois, Conradi’s second wife Anna wrote:

"Your grandfather Conradi was architect and sculptor at St. Alphonsus Church at Lincoln, Southport and Wellington Avenues, Chicago. Also, the tallest statuary, 'Progress' is his work (I think it’s on Montgomery Ward building) can be seen from Lake Forest and afar."

Although there is no other documentary evidence to corroborate Mrs. Conradi’s conviction, the sculptor’s oldest son Leo also attributed the statue to his father. Just before his death in 1979 Leo told Mrs. Anderson that he remembered the day his father’s statue of The Spirit of Progress was placed on Ward’s building.

STATUE WILL TOP WARD'S NEW BUILDING
Chicago Tribune. January 27, 1929

Foundations are now being Installed for the corporation for Montgomery Ward & Co. at the southwest corner of Chicago Avenue and Larrabee Street. This structure will occupy a site that was purchased by the late A. Montgomery Ward at the time bought the land for Ward’s present huge building, just across the street.

Designed by the construction department of the mail-order firm, the underlying direction of W. H. McCaully, chief engineer, the new building will be of modernistic architecture. At one corner there will be a tower surmounted by a figure reminiscent of the statue atop the Tower building at Michigan and Madison, Ward’s home.

Spirit of Progress on top of Ward’s Administration Building on Chicago Avenue. Sheet music for Spirit of Progress March, composed in 1928, was published before the final design of the statue was approved.

The new building will contain the executive, Administrative, and general offices and the clerical departments. The first floor will be for retail store purposes, replacing the establishment In the building on the street. Clerical departments will take up the second and third floors.

On the fourth floor, there will be a large cafeteria for employees and for customers of the store. Executive departments of the chain store and retail store divisions will be found on the fifth story. The merchandise buying group will take up the sixth floor, while the catalog and general operating departments will be on the seventh. And, finally. the executives are to be located on the top floor where it’s presumed they’ll have walnut-trimmed rooms, fireplaces, and the other perquisites of the “big shots.”

The building is to be of reinforced concrete construction. Financing is being accomplished by a $2.000,000 bond Issue recently announced by Lawrence Stern & Co. and the First Trust and Savings bank. Winston & Co. were the real estate brokers In arranging the enterprise. The Wells Brothers Construction company has the contract.

The Catalog House was designated a Chicago Landmark on May 17, 2000. In later years, Montgomery Ward and Company added several warehouses and parking structures, followed by a 26-story office building in 1972.

After the bankruptcy of Montgomery Ward in 2001, the earliest buildings were converted into upscale condominiums. In 2004, the office tower also was converted into condominiums, now called The Montgomery.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.