Background
Samuel Henry Kress was born on July 23, 1863 in Cherryville, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of John Franklin and Margaret Dodson Connor Kress. His father had operated a drugstore.
(This is the first volume of Occasional Papers on Samuel H...)
This is the first volume of Occasional Papers on Samuel H. Kress Collection and is published in memory of Mario Modestini who died in Jan 06. The book marks the tenth anniversary of the advanced training in Old Masters conservation sponsored by the Kress Foundation at the Conservation Center of the institute of Fine Arts
https://www.amazon.com/Studying-Conserving-Paintings-Samuel-Foundation/dp/1904982069?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1904982069
merchant philanthropist art collector
Samuel Henry Kress was born on July 23, 1863 in Cherryville, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of John Franklin and Margaret Dodson Connor Kress. His father had operated a drugstore.
At the age of seventeen, Kress passed a teacher's examination and was assigned to a school of eighty students near Slatington, Pennsylvania.
By 1887 Kress had saved enough money to purchase a novelty and stationery store in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania; three years later, he bought out a stationery and toy wholesaler in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His brother Claude joined him to operate the latter business. The brothers worked long hours and seemed to live only for business. Their methods were successful, and the two stores weathered the panic of 1893 without difficulty. Kress early followed the practice of financing his firm's expansion from income, pouring virtually all profits back into the business.
By the 1890's the potential of specialty stores led him to consider moving to a better market area and opening a nickel-and-dime variety store to offer low-priced merchandise of good quality. He proposed to obtain his stock directly from the manufacturers, and thereby to eliminate the middleman's markup. Kress envisioned a store that would do more than merely display the merchandise that wholesalers offered. He planned to bridge the gap between the developing mass-production factories and the great retail market and hoped to influence manufacturers to supply him with items that he believed would sell quickly. By offering fewer items than the traditional nickel-and-dime specialty stores, and by buying them in larger quantities, he sought to offer bargain prices to a lower-income clientele. This goal "of creating a merchandising force that would compel the production of new kinds of merchandise values" came to distinguish the Kress operation.
In 1896 Kress established a store in Memphis, Tennessee, then a thriving cotton-marketing river town with good rail connections. The highly successful opening was characterized by a novel practice that became a standard feature of the Kress stores. Only sales leaders were displayed: one window was devoted entirely to nickel saucepans and another to nickel jugs. Kress's hope that sales volume would offset the low profit margin on individual units proved well-founded. Crowds flocked to the store, and in the first year it grossed more than $31, 000. In March 1897, Kress expanded his operation to nearby Nashville, Tennessee, where Claude Kress became store manager. After careful planning, Kress added other stores, ultimately developing a chain. Although each addition strained his working capital, this expansion took place during a period of relatively stable economic growth. More than any of his competitors, he believed in owning as many of his store buildings and properties as possible.
By 1900 twelve stores were in operation, and the company headquarters was moved from Wilkes-Barre to New York City, where Kress could maintain contact with virtually all the manufacturers whose goods he bought. Within a year he added items costing twenty-five cents to his stock. National expansion of the chain began in the area from Georgia to Texas.
By 1907, Kress operated fifty-one stores and grossed $3 million. In 1916 the enterprise was consolidated into the S. H. Kress Company. All Kress stores operated in identical fashion. Kress early instituted a managerial training program, and neither frills nor waste was tolerated. He travelled constantly, checking the operation of his stores. The New York office sent detailed instructions to every employee.
In 1921 on a trip to Italy, Kress met the art dealer Alessandro Contini, who helped launch his career as a collector. Kress began to import art by the boatload, most of it of high quality. The dealer Joseph Duveen later became Kress's advisor on his acquisitions, which included paintings, statuary, medallions, and textiles. In December 1938, Kress placed Giorgione's painting The Adoration of the Shepherds on display in his Fifth Avenue store, where it became a symbol of his cultural interests as well as an attraction for Christmas shoppers.
In 1929 Kress established the Kress Foundation "to promote the moral, physical and mental welfare and progress of the human race. " The foundation, to which he gave approximately forty percent of his company's voting stock, conveyed his art collections to the public and dispensed money for medical research. One of the first grants, for $8 million, was to the New York University-Bellevue Hospital for post graduate education. Kress served as president of the foundation until 1946.
Around 1930, Kress began to withdraw from direction of his company, and it was assumed that he would be replaced by his brother Claude. After the latter's death in 1940, Kress returned as chief executive officer. In 1942 his younger brother Ross, who had served as treasurer, became president. Three years later, when Kress had a stroke, Ross Kress became director of the Kress enterprises, serving as vice-chairman of the Kress board and president of the foundation. Kress himself remained chairman of the board.
He bequeathed the bulk of his $17. 5 million estate to the Kress Foundation.
(This is the first volume of Occasional Papers on Samuel H...)
Kress never married.