GEORGE GOUGH BOOTH

(1864-1949)

Fourth of ten children of Henry Wood and Clara Gagnier Booth and #2 son.

In 1887 GEORGE married Ellen Warren Scripps in the Church of the Ephipany being the church of Rev. Woolfenden (the “clan” church). Ellen was the oldest child of James Edmund and Harriet Messenger Scripps.

Founds Evans and Booth, Metalworkers , formerly the Canadian subsidiary of the E.T. Barnum Wire and Iron Company of Detroit for whom George worked before marrying Ellen Scripps. In 1888 George sells his interest in this company and agrees to come into the Scripps newspaper business as Business Manager of the Evening News replacing Scripps cousin John Scripps Sweeney, with whom E.W. Scripps was having disagreements. It was apparently E.W. Scripps idea to convince his older brother James to replace John Sweeney with George Booth because he thought that considering James ill health that the business required a stronger administrator and a committee of management should James become unavailable for health reasons. This was the genesis of the later to be litigated verbal agreement on a Committee of Management for the Detroit newspapers

Detroit Committee of Management 1887/1888 (Quadripartite Agreement): Members to the agreement: 1) James E. Scripps, 2) E.W. Scripps, 3) George Henry Scripps, 4) John Scripps Sweeney. In addition to creating a four person management committee for the Detroit News, the agreement also prohibited each member from transferring his shares in the Detroit News to “any outsider”. E.W. and John Sweeney understood the agreement to mean that any deceased member’s shares were to be divided amongst the surviving members ….Thus, when George Henry Scripps dies in 1900 and with James in poor health, control of the Detroit papers between the family of James E. Scripps and E. W. Scripps hangs in the balance. George Scripps having died without heirs and leaving all of his shares in The Evening News to E.W. Scripps which is contested by James, his estate is thrown into litigation in Ohio courts by E.W Scripps, a resident then of Cincinnati. The attorneys for James Scripps had the case transferred from Ohio courts to Michigan courts. Ultimately the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the Quadripartite Agreement did not allow George to leave his shares to E.W. This Michigan court case decision was what allowed the Detroit News shares of James E. Scripps to pass upon his death to his four children. Had the case been decided the other way, Cranbrook could never have been built.

NOTE: The Scripps family newspaper interests were organized into two separate companies: 1) The Detroit News Association (The Evening News Association)*, and 2) The Scripps Publishing Company (Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, St Louis) . Company #1 was wholly owned by James E. Scripps & Company. Company #2 was owned by various Scripps family members including James, but the President was E.W. Scripps.
*FOOTNOTE: for a short period of time E.W. Scripps was appointed President of the Detroit News Association while James and his family traveled abroad. During his brief tenure as President of the Detroit News Association in 1889, E.W. Scripps made so many management changes and increased the promotion expenses of the Detroit paper to such an extent that upon his return James removed E.W. and basically banished him from the paper.

George G. Booth became Business Manager of the Detroit Evening News in 1888 and received his own shares in the Evening News Association separate and apart from his wife’s inheritance. In a strange twist of fate, it was E. W. Scripps who puts forward George Booth’s name as a successor business manager for the Evening News in an attempt to block James’s first choice John Scripps Sweeney from being named to the position. E.W. believed that Sweeney was too loyal to James and would oppose E.W.’s ideas for growing the circulation of the Evening News.

George Booth became de facto “clerk of works” managing and overseeing the construction of Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church 1890. George and Ellen Booth donated Trinity Church’s organ. His father-in-law James E. Scripps lent the couple a large sum of money with which they constructed a beautiful large brick residence across the street on Trumbull Avenue, effectively creating a Scripps family compound. This location allowed George to effectively oversee the construction of Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church, which was sited kitty-corner to his house across the junction of Trumbull and Grand River Avenue.

George Booth was invited by Herbert Langford Warren to join the BOSTON SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS as an artisan ironwork designer when the Boston Society is founded in 1897, becoming one of its first members.

In 1900 George starts the Cranbrook Press in the attic of the Evening New building. It is modeled on the Wm. Morris Kelmscott Press using special hand made watermarked paper and special hand set type and wood block carved illustrations hand illuminated my his youngest sister Beatrice Booth. The Cranbrook Press prints limited editions of approximately 200 to 250 copies of each of the seven titles and one catalog. The Press closed in 1903. Later in 1906 George founded the DETROIT SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS.
NOTE: The original manual printing press of the Cranbrook Press is in the collection of the Cranbrook Educational Community.

George G. Booth founded and becomes President of the DETROIT SOCIETY OF ARTS AND CRAFTS in 1906.
NOTE : This organization in 1926 opened a society school offering a four year education in art at its Brush Park studio building. In 1958 the Society relocated to the cultural center in a building designed by Minouru Yamaski. Then in 1975 it expanded its society school, built a new building by William Kessler, and changed its name to the COLLEGE OF CREATIVE STUDIES.

Purchased his own newspapers: The Grand Rapids Evening Press (original purchase was The Morning Press in 1891) and Bay City Times. In addition, James E. Scripps and George G. Booth together owned the Chicago (Daily) Journal with George Booth acting as publisher for several years beginning about 1895. Ralph Booth succeeded his brother as Publisher until the paper was sold in 1905.

George G. Booth became President of the Evening News upon the death of James E. Scripps in 1906 and continues as President until his retirement in 1929, but he remained a Director until his death. He was succeeded as president of the Evening News by William E. Scripps. In 1915 George hired Albert Kahn to design and build the Detroit News Building.

George G. Booth accepted the Scripps family seat on the board of incorporators of the private Detroit Museum of Art following the death of James Scripps. George Booth later resigned this seat and was replaced by his younger brother Ralph following Ralph’s return to the States in 1914. George Booth’s stated reason for resigning from the board of the DMA was that as a newspaper publisher he felt that his position put him in conflict with the public interest. The main issue with the DMA from 1910 onwards was how to secure public funding from the City of Detroit whilst still remaining a private organization. (The City Charter of 1918 created a public / city arts commission to oversee the private museum in the public interest and to oversee the transfer of the assets of that private museum to the city. This was the solution and conclusion of this contentious legal and public funding issue.)

George Co-Founds Booth Publishing Company with brothers Ralph and Edmund in 1914.
George becomes Chairman; Ralph becomes President, and Edmund remains publisher of the largest newspaper The Grand Rapids Evening News into which is merged brother Ralph’s smaller Grand Rapids Tribune. George contributes The Bay City Times, and Ralph contributes his owned newspapers: The Saginaw News, The Flint Journal, the Jackson Citizen-Patriot, and the Muskegon Chronicle, plus his shares in The Bay City Times, and his interest in Kalamazoo newspapers.

Two years after George and Ellen’s marriage in 1889 with monies borrowed from his father-in-law James E. Scripps George and Ellen Booth built their first residence on a large irregular lot on Trumbull near its intersection with Grand River Avenue in a neighborhood now called “Woodbridge”. The lot was located across the street from a much larger lot on which his father-in-law would later build his very large Norman Tudor brick mansion. Here James and Ellen raised their expanding family and hosted a large Scripps family reunion. Then in 1904 George purchased two large farms and former grist mill located on a pond just off Woodward Ave in Oakland County as a weekend picnic site on Lone Pine Road some twenty miles outside the city but easily accessible via the interurban rail line that ran up Woodward to the City of Pontiac. Here in 1907, they broke ground for a new large residence. In 1908, they moved into the house that would more comfortably house their family and provide a residence for his father, mother, and older brother Charles. Thus began a development process that over twenty years would transform the grist mill and farm into a manor house and estate called Cranbrook.

George in 1923 finances Christ Church Cranbrook, originally working with architect RALPH CRAM and then switching to CRAM’s former partner Bertram Goodhue (who was also the architect of Christ Church Grosse Pointe). George insists that the plans for the nave of Christ Church Cranbrook be extended by two additional bays.

Starts the Cranbrook Schools with Brookside in 1918 with George Booth acting as his own architect with additions in 1928 to 1930 by Henry Scripps Booth (his youngest son), originally conceived as a meeting house and school for choir boys and neighborhood children to serve Christ Church Cranbrook. Next Eliel Saarinen is hired to manage the Cranbrook architectural office taking over from George Booth and his son Henry Booth and begins in 1925 to design the Cranbrook Academy of Art followed by the Cranbrook Schools, Science Center and Art Museum. The final Cranbrook community school KINGSWOOD SCHOOL for Girls, a project of Ellen Scripps Booth, was constructed in 1930.

George Booth as an art collector:

Though not generally recognized as an art collector to the extent of his younger brother Ralph, George Booth did, nevertheless, assemble a large art collection that formed the core permanent collection of the Cranbrook Art Museum, much of which sadly was sold to raise operating funds for the Cranbrook schools during the 1970’s.

But there are other collections that George Booth assembled or paid for that continue to enrich southeastern Michigan. The first collection relates to both the collection at Cranbrook and to George’s patronage of the arts and crafts in the field of metal work. George Booth admired, encouraged and collected master works by several great metal smithing tradesmen and firms: Samuel Yellin, Oscar Boch, Edgar Brandt and the Edward F. Caldwell firm in New York City. Much of this collection resides at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It is visible in the items commissioned by Ralph for the museum building in the Woodward entrance doors, the two great matching gates and grills off the Woodward lobby, and the radiator grills in the Great Hall all Yellin commissions. Additionally, an internal gate to one of the American galleries is by Edgar Brandt, donated by George Booth, and the “Wisteria Gates” placed at the entrance to the Diego Rivera Court, which were designed by Thomas Hastings for the Edw. F. Caldwell Company in New York. These wrought and cast iron gates were originally commissioned by Henry Clay Frick for the atrium of what is now the Frick Gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York City. After they were rejected by Mrs. Frick ( who thought the design would catch the fabric of her lady guests), they were personally purchased by George and donated to the museum.

All of these donations originally to the Detroit Museum of Art were purchased by George Booth with the original intention of creating a special gallery for the arts and crafts in the new the DIA building. However, the Arts Commissioners did not agree, and this gallery was never built. This rejection by the Arts Commission is why a number of George Booth’s planned gifts and some actual donations were withdrawn from the DIA. You can still see evidence of the arts and crafts influence at the DIA, especially the two Pewabic tile niches that flank the entrance off the Great Hall to the American Galleries, which in the original 1927 floor plan was the main entrance to the changing exhibition gallery.

Another great George Booth collection is the Havemeyer Tiffany Collection at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). This collection was funded and encouraged by George Booth with a gift of $15,000 to Emil Lorch, Dean of the College of Architecture at the University of Michigan, to attend the sale at Anderson Galleries in NYC held April 21-22, 1930, of the Louis Tiffany architectural fragments, windows and mosaics removed from the Henry Havemeyer mansion of Fifth Avenue following the death of his widow. Henry Havemeyer was one of Louis Tiffany’s major patrons, and Tiffany supplied the Havemeyers with bespoke windows and fittings for much of this very large house. This collection, though now somewhat reduced in size, is one of the major highlights of the UMMA collection. See the quarto size brochure on this collection entitled THE HAVEMEYER TIFFANY COLLECTION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MUSEUM OF ART, 1992, by William J. Hennessey, Director.

NOTE: Regarding George G. Booth’s donations to the collection of the DIA, and in the spirit of the arts and crafts movement, George commissioned a replica from the Morris Merton Abbey Tapestry Works of the famous and very large tapestry by William Morris, Burne Jones and Henry Dearle known at the “Passage of Venus”, the original having been destroyed in a fire. This George Booth special commission along with commissions for the two tapestries of the old and new testaments now at Christ Church Cranbrook are the commissions which kept the Morris tapestry works in business in the late 1920’s. George Booth had read about the imminent closure of the tapestry work in a London newspaper and responded with these commissions. Unfortunately, the tapestry is so large and heavy with bullion thread that it is difficult to hang, and so it rests rolled up in textile storage at the DIA.

Note: The fourth great Morris tapestry acquired by George Booth, possibly from a collection in Adelaide, Australia, is the very large Burne Jones designed tapestry of the meeting of King Saul and David following the slaying of Goliath which hangs in the rector’s study/office at Christ Church Cranbrook. This purchase may have been on the recommendation of Ralph Booth