Spencer Penrose was an American mine operator and philanthropist. He was also an entrepreneur and investor.
Background
Spencer Penrose was born on November 2, 1865 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, United States in a distinguished family. He was a descendant of William Biddle, associate of William Penn and founder of the Biddle family in America, a great-grandson of Clement Biddle Penrose, one of the three commissioners for the territory ceded by France to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase, and a grandson of Charles Bingham Penrose, a leading Philadelphia lawyer. His father, Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose (1827 - 1908), was an eminent Philadelphia physician, his mother, Sarah Hannah (Boies) Penrose, a descendant of the Thomas family of Maryland and the Boies family of Massachusetts. Spencer was the fifth of their seven sons. Three of his brothers achieved distinction, Boies as a United States Senator and longtime Republican overlord of Pennsylvania, Charles as a Philadelphia surgeon, and Richard A. F. Penrose as a geologist and metallurgist.
Education
Spencer Penrose received his early education at home from tutors and followed his brothers to Harvard. He was graduated with an A. B. degree in 1886.
Career
Spencer Penrose spurned a banking vocation, struck out for the West, reaching Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1892. . There he joined Charles L. Tutt, also of an old Philadelphia family, at first in real estate and then in mining during the second year of the Cripple Creek, Colorado, gold boom. Their claim hit the apex of one of the district's richest veins, and "Spec" Penrose and Tutt became millionaires. With Tutt and Charles M. MacNeill, Penrose next branched into smelting and milling gold ores. But if gold was the foundation of the Penrose fortune, copper was the bonanza. Penrose was one of a small group of associates, including his brothers and father, who organized (1903) the Utah Copper Company to exploit the ores at Bingham Canyon, Utah, with a new refining process. This process proved so successful that soon Penrose was taking $200, 000 a month from the operation.
This process proved so successful that soon Penrose was taking $200, 000 a month from the operation. In a complicated series of maneuvers, the Utah Copper Company passed into the control of the interests headed by Meyer Guggenheim in 1910 and was eventually (1915) merged into the Kennecott Copper Company, at a price which left the original organizers multimillionaires. Two other Penrose propertiesб the Chino and Ray Consolidated copper companiesб were subsequently sold to the Guggenheims at a substantial profit. As early as 1899 Penrose began to relax to enjoyment of his wealth.
Spencer Penrose traveled widely, cultivated his epicurean tastes, acquired a luxurious mansion, "El Pomar, " in Colorado Springs, and became renowned for Lucullan parties which sometimes lasted a week. His business interests in later years extended to real estate, agriculture, banking, investment, and promotion of the tourist resources of the Pike's Peak area. With MacNeill he built the lavish Broadmoor Hotel resort near Colorado Springs in 1917 - 1918, later adding a golf course, polo fields, a zoo, an ice palace, and the 10, 000-seat Will Rogers Memorial Stadium.
Spencer Penrose constructed the road to the top of Pike's Peak and inaugurated the annual Labor Day auto race to the summit. On his ranch he undertook some of the earliest purebred livestock experiments in the West. His Garden City Land Company pioneered the sugar beet in western Kansas. A Republican in politics, Penrose was a Colorado delegate to the 1916 national convention. In 1928 he bolted the party to support Alfred E. Smith, solely on the prohibition issue; he was the leader of repeal forces in the West.
Before his death, Spencer Penrose divided the bulk of his fortune between his wife and stepdaughter. Besides private philanthropies, he gave Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs a dormitory in memory of his brother Boies. On his deathbed he created and endowed the Penrose Tumor Institute, a medical and research center later expanded by his widow's generosity into Glockner-Penrose Hospital. Penrose died of throat cancer at Colorado Springs on December 7, 1939. His ashes were placed in the family vault in the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun, built by Penrose on Cheyenne Mountain above Colorado Springs.
Penrose's will disclosed an estate still in excess of $11, 500, 000, most of which he left to establish the El Pomar Foundation for charitable uses.
Achievements
Personality
Handsome, tall (6 feet 2 inches), and athletic (190 pounds and a good amateur boxer), Spencer Penrose had worn the outfit of an eastern "dude" throughout his days in the rough Cripple Creek mining camp: riding boots or puttees, long sport jacket, white collar and tie. He added a wide-brimmed Western hat for a dress style Penrose was to affect for the rest of his life. He wore a mustache and in later years, with characteristic dash, kept the ends waxed to sharp points. A swashbuckling individualist, Spencer Penrose had a flair for the dramatic, the lavish, and the zestful that almost eclipsed his business achievements.
Connections
On April 26, 1906, Spencer Penrose was married in London to a young widow, Mrs. Julie Villiers (Lewis) McMillan of Detroit. They had no children, but Penrose developed a strong fatherly devotion to his stepdaughter, the Countess Gladys de Cornet de Ways Ruart of Brussels.