{"id":8815,"date":"2015-03-28T12:44:13","date_gmt":"2015-03-28T16:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/getitright.pmss.net\/?page_id=8815"},"modified":"2021-07-18T22:24:29","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T02:24:29","slug":"darwin-d-martin","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/staging.pinemountainsettlement.net\/?page_id=8815","title":{"rendered":"DARWIN D. MARTIN Board"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pine Mountain Settlement School
\nSeries 05: GOVERNANCE Board of Trustees
\nDarwin D. Martin Board<\/strong><\/h5>\n

DARWIN D. MARTIN Board
\n<\/strong>Member, Board of Trustees 1920-1933
\n(President, Board of Trustees 1920-1929)<\/h2>\n
\"\"
\nDarwin D. Martin, (1865-1935) Photo: Wikipedia Free Media Repository. Accessed 2021-05-26<\/strong><\/h5>\n

DARWIN D. MARTIN EARLY YEARS.<\/h3>\n

Darwin D. Martin was born in Bouckville, New York, in 1865. His\u00a0early childhood was very difficult following his mother’s death\u00a0when he was only six. The Martin family was large, with five siblings, of whom Darwin was the\u00a0youngest. Darwin and an older brother went to New York City where they\u00a0worked at several jobs.<\/p>\n

As a young man, Martin found an opportunity to take himself to Buffalo, New York, where he was determined to secure a job with the Larkin Company, a soap manufacturing enterprise, founded by John D. Larkin in 1875. One of the first jobs Darwin held was as a “soap slinger” (a seller of soap) for the company.<\/p>\n

Through resolute hard work and what must have been a considerable charm, the young Martin moved up the ladder of the company and into the corporate structure as a top executive of the company. By the early years of the twentieth century, Martin was one of the highest-paid executives in the United States.<\/p>\n

Larkin Company,<\/a> similar to its\u00a0competitor Sears and Roebuck Company, specialized in the mail-order business. John D. Larkin<\/a> started the company by marketing soap and then, under the leadership of Elbert Hubbard<\/a>, Larkin’s brother-in-law, the company expanded its sales. The\u00a0sale of two popular soaps (Sweet Home Soap, a yellow laundry soap, and Cr\u00e8me Oatmeal, a toilet soap) soon evolved into other products marketed directly to the consumer.<\/p>\n

While the company survived the crashes of the 1890s, the\u00a0subsequent\u00a0economic downturn in the later 1930s resulted in the collapse of the Larkin empire, and with it the employment and fortunes of Darwin D. Martin.<\/p>\n

As an employee at Larkin, Martin evidently had good literate, organizational, and mathematical skills, as he was targeted to fill the position left vacant by the departure of Larkin’s most famous employee, Elbert Hubbard<\/strong><\/a><\/strong>. Hubbard is well-known as the founder of the Roycroft<\/a> reformist community in East Aurora, New York, not far from Buffalo. An important Arts and Crafts community, the Roycrofters\u00a0strongly influenced art and architecture in the United States and abroad in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.<\/p>\n

Martin eagerly fell under the influence of Elbert Hubbard. Hubbard explained his\u00a0Credo<\/i>\u00a0by writing “I believe\u00a0John Ruskin<\/a>,\u00a0William Morris<\/a>,\u00a0Henry Thoreau<\/a>,\u00a0Walt Whitman<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Leo Tolstoy<\/a>\u00a0to be Prophets of God, and they should rank in mental reach and spiritual insight with\u00a0Elijah<\/a>,\u00a0Hosea<\/a>,\u00a0Ezekiel<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Isaiah<\/a>.”<\/sup><\/p>\n

The Roycrofters<\/strong> and his work with Pine Mountain reflects many of the same beliefs incorporating the use of head, hand, and heart in all presented tasks. The job Hubbard filled at Larkin was as administrative assistant to the president, John Larkin, and this was the position Martin assumed and expanded, following Hubbard’s departure. As an excellent records keeper, Martin was asked to assist in the creation of a card catalog replacement of the common ledger book used for Larkin company records. Martin’s initiatives with the card catalog were exemplary and were later followed by many other companies. His efforts resulted in a substantial movement forward for Larkin and were richly rewarded by the company which continued to promote him and his good work.<\/p>\n

As an aggressive competitor of Sears and Roebuck Co. in Chicago, the Larkin Company lead the way in innovations and the aggressive marketing of the company resulted in substantial revenue at the turn of the century. The rapid and profitable practices made many of the executives of the company millionaires, including Martin. It also set the stage for a rapid decline in the Great Depression as the expansion put strains on the company’s resources. When the Great Depression descended, Martin lost everything.\u00a0 He died just shortly in 1935 at the age of 70.<\/p>\n

DARWIN D. MARTIN Board: THE FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT CONNECTION<\/h3>\n

One of the most important expansions of the Larkin Company came under Martin’s assignment. In 1902 he was charged to locate an architect for a proposed new Larkin administrative building. Using his brother William’s contacts in Chicago, and the recommendations of William R. Heath<\/strong>, another Larkin Company executive, Martin located Frank\u00a0Lloyd Wright<\/a> sometime early in 1902 and the two men became fast friends. Their mutual points of ambition, skill, and difficult early childhood, bonded the two men.\u00a0 It was Martin who made the recommendation of Wright to Elbert Hubbard as a potential architect for the proposed Larkin headquarters. It was also Martin who pushed Wright as an architectural resource when Martin assumed his executive role with the company. Martin’s endorsement of Wright’s work was ultimately the key instrument in the architect’s construction of the Larkin Company Administration Building (destroyed in 1950) and for other building’s contracts and construction of at least fifteen more architectural structures.<\/p>\n

Martin also became a source of finance for many of Wright’s projects. Because he started the processes of Wright’s work with Larkin, the architect looked to Martin as a conduit for other contracts and consultation. It was initially a very productive relationship but typical of Wright, he often took more than he gave back.<\/p>\n

One of the contracts Martin arranged with Wright was for Martin himself. He was eager to build a family complex that would keep his close-knit family together. He immediately went to Wright who soon became Martin’s private architect for a series of family dwellings in Buffalo, New York.\u00a0 One of the most important constructions was the so-called Darwin D. Martin Complex in Buffalo.<\/p>\n

Wright and Martin shared many things in common but they apparently had a different perspective on the supportive elements of friendship. As seen at Pine Mountain Settlement and in other corners of Martin’s life, he rarely passed up an opportunity to help others.\u00a0 Wright was not nearly so giving of self. Possibly it was the difficult motherless early years of Martin’s life that inspired him to develop his Martin family complex, which consisted of several homes, and to extend this “family” concept to other areas of his life. His sister Delta Martin Barton, her husband, George Barton, Darwin D. Martin, and his wife Isabelle Reidpath Martin and all their children moved into their Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the family compound by 1905.<\/p>\n

There were many years of prosperity for Martin and his family Following many years of decline following the family’s economic misfortunes, the Martin compound fell into a severe state of disrepair. Today it is still undergoing a $23 million dollar renovation and is recognized as a signature Wright project. The architect himself referred to the Martin compound as his “finest work” and many critics see the architectural complex as his magnum opus.<\/i><\/p>\n

Just how Darwin D. Martin came to be associated with Pine Mountain Settlement School and how he was placed into the position of Director of the Board in 1920 is not fully known at this time.\u00a0 Additional work in the School Archive should shed light on this question. Work continues on the many threads of communication during the formative years of the School.\u00a0 Mary Rockwell Hook<\/a>, Pine Mountain’s chief architect, is one possible link but the special relationship Martin had with Ethel de Long Zande, the School co-founder, is also intriguing.<\/p>\n

Mary Rockwell Hook<\/a>, the lead architect for Pine Mountain Settlement, had a deep connection with the School and was with the institution from its beginning in 1913 until her death at the age of 100. She was possibly the contact for bringing Martin onto the Board. It is interesting that both Wright and Hook were interested in designing a “campus” around a central building, the hallmark of Wright’s innovation in the Darwin D. Martin complex. Further, Martin and Hook, and especially Katherine Pettit<\/a> and Ethel de Long<\/a> had strong interests in the Arts and Crafts Movement<\/a> and had kept pace with the Country Life Movement<\/a> as it waxed and waned. As noted earlier, the attraction to the ideas of Elbert Hubbard<\/a> came to Pine Mountain in many forms.\u00a0 More research is needed to define the threads of influence that brought Martin to Pine Mountain and how he influenced the development and the architectural decisions at the School.<\/p>\n\n\t\t