Guide to the Peter Ascoli Papers 1896-2006


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Table of Contents

• Descriptive Summary
• Information on Use
• Access
• Citation
• Biographical Note
• Scope Note
• Related Resources
• Subject Headings
• INVENTORY
• Series I: Primary Sources Concerning Julius Rosenwald, 1896-1937
  • Subseries 1: Photocopies of Known Archival Provenance
  • Subseries 2: Photocopies of Unknown Archival Provenance
• Series II: Secondary Sources on Julius Rosenwald and His Context, 1897-2003
• Series III: Estate and Trust Records, 1914-1944
• Series IV: Family Interviews and Private Writings about Julius Rosenwald, 1921-1994
• Series V: Materials from and Site Visits to Rosenwald Schools in the South, 1986-2006
• Series VI: Correspondence and Additional Materials of Peter Ascoli, 1915-2003
• Series VII: Photographs, 1913-2001

Descriptive Summary

Information on Use

Access

The collection is open for research.

Citation

When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Ascoli, Peter. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Biographical Note

Peter M. Ascoli (b. 1942) is the grandson of Chicago merchant and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), and the son of Marion Rosenwald Ascoli (1902-1990). Peter Ascoli earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1964 and later a Ph.D. in European history from the University of California at Berkeley. From 1971 to 1978, he was an assistant professor at Utah State University, after which he returned to Chicago and worked in fundraising for cultural and non-profit organizations in the city. He began the biography of his grandfather in the early 1990s and published it in 2006 under the title, Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South.

Julius Rosenwald was a towering figure of American industry and philanthropy in the early twentieth century. Born in Springfield, Illinois in 1862 to German Jewish parents, Rosenwald operated clothing retail and wholesale businesses in New York and Chicago before he made, in 1895, through his brother-in-law, a $75,000 investment in the young mail-order retailer, Sears, Roebuck and Company. Within two years, Rosenwald stepped away from his wholesale clothing business to work full-time as an executive at Sears. He greatly improved efficiency and reliability in the mail-order operation at Sears, and after he became chairman in 1910, he oversaw the expansion of Sears into the nation’s largest retailer. Although Rosenwald began to introduce some retail stores, the full transition of Sears from a mail-order to retail-store company would be carried out by his successor as chairman, Robert E. Wood.

Alongside his career in business, Rosenwald left a considerable legacy as a philanthropist. He contributed to a wide range of charitable causes in Chicago and across the nation, including public housing, crop improvement, Jewish organizing, and the Y.M.C.A. In the mid-1920s, he made the founding gift to establish the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, which he had originally hoped would be modeled on the style of the Deutsches Museum in Munich. Rosenwald also served as an early trustee of the University of Chicago, to which he made several important gifts, and where Rosenwald Hall was named in his honor.

As a philanthropist, he remains perhaps most well-known for his contributions to Black education in the South at a time when enrollment of Black children in grade schools was often less than half the rate among white children. Inspired by an essay by Booker T. Washington and a later meeting with him, Rosenwald set up a foundation (the Julius Rosenwald Fund) to create schools for Blacks in communities from Texas to Maryland. By 1932, over 5,000 Rosenwald schools had been built. Rosenwald also supported Black colleges and universities through collaboration on initiatives with the General Education Board, and through direct contributions to several institutions, including Tuskegee Institute, Fisk University and Howard University.

Julius Rosenwald and Augusta (‘Gussie’) Nusbaum were married in 1890 and had five children: Lessing (b. 1891), Adele (b. 1892), Edith (b. 1895), Marion (b. 1902) and William (b. 1903). Gussie died in 1928, and Julius remarried in 1929, to Adelaide Goodkind, the widowed mother of his daughter-in-law, Edith Goodkind Rosenwald, who was married to Lessing. Gussie and Julius’ youngest daughter, Marion, was briefly married to Alfred K. Stern before wedding Max Ascoli in 1940.

Other family members that appear in the collection are: Janet Becker (b. 1930), the youngest child of Lessing and Edith Rosenwald, and Phillip M. Stern (b. 1926), the youngest child of Edith Rosenwald (second daughter of Gussie and Julius) and Edgar B. Stern. Longue Vue House and Gardens was the home that Edith and Edgar Stern built in New Orleans. It is now a public venue and museum with archival holdings.

Scope Note

The Peter Ascoli Papers represent the materials that Ascoli gathered during the preparation of his book about his grandfather, Julius Rosenwald. A large share of the collection consists of photocopies of material that is held in other institutions that have Rosenwald archives, but an equally substantial share represents documents that were in the possession of different Rosenwald family members and are not available elsewhere. These documents are contained in Series III and IV. Lastly, the Ascoli Papers complement the Julius Rosenwald Papers, which were similarly donated to the University of Chicago Library after Morris Werner completed his book on Rosenwald in the mid-twentieth century.

The Ascoli Papers are arranged into seven series that span 1896 to 2006:

Series I: Primary Sources Concerning Julius Rosenwald, is organized into two subseries.

Subseries 1: Photocopies of Known Archival Provenance, gathers together the documents that Ascoli collected during his visits to archives that have Rosenwald collections. The documents range from Rosenwald’s correspondence with his immediate family to philanthropic activities. Of note is a letter by Booker T. Washington that was seminal to the development of what would become the Rosenwald schools. Materials in this subseries are arranged alphabetically, and the name of the archive where the originals are held is given in brackets for each item.

Subseries 2: Photocopies of Unknown Archival Provenance, groups together diverse documents for which the location of the original holding could not be determined. The materials again include correspondence with Rosenwald’s immediate family but cover a wider range of his philanthropic activity. Contemporary interviews with and tributes to Rosenwald will also be found here, along with documents from his leadership of Sears. Of note is the ledger of the philanthropic gifts that Rosenwald made from 1899 to 1931. Materials in this subseries are arranged alphabetically.

Series II: Secondary Sources on Julius Rosenwald and His Context, contains assessments of Rosenwald as a leader in business and philanthropy and his connection to the American Jewish community of the early 20th century. The assessments were written both during and after his lifetime, and represent academic articles, magazine articles and book excerpts. Materials in this series are arranged alphabetically.

Series III: Estate and Trust Records, holds material relating to executing the estate of Julius Rosenwald. There is a large report on the entire estate as well as a report from the Rosenwald Family Association. Created only a few days before his death, the Rosenwald Family Association received a share of the estate’s assets in order to fulfill the remaining pledges that Rosenwald had made to charitable organizations. Material in this series is arranged alphabetically.

Series IV: Family Interviews and Private Writings about Julius Rosenwald, gathers together materials that had been in the possession of different family members and were not previously in an archive. Another grandson, Phillip M. Stern, originally assembled much of the material in doing oral history interviews with Rosenwald’s children (Stern’s aunts and uncles). He also interviewed persons who had worked closely with Rosenwald (e.g., Nathan Levin, an accountant) and persons who had attended a Rosenwald school. A privately-written autobiography by William Rosenwald will be found in this series, along with a book describing the plan of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the institution that inspired the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Material in this series is arranged chronologically.

Series V: Materials from and Site Visits to Rosenwald Schools in the South, contains the diverse material that Ascoli collected as part of making visits to Rosenwald schools. Community members sent him brochures and newsletters ahead of visits and Ascoli gathered other documents from local institutions. Ascoli also collected newsletters and magazine articles from places for which it is not known whether he visited or had a plan to do so. Material in this series is arranged alphabetically.

Series VI: Correspondence and Additional Materials of Peter Ascoli, represents items that fall into one of two categories. (i) The item pertains to research logistics: planning projects (some of which were not part of the book) or records from a visit to an archive, including notes. (ii) The item is a primary or secondary source about Rosenwald that has been arranged separately from Series I and II because the documents were conserved by Ascoli with materials that indicate how he obtained them or that reveal a contemporary discussion of a subject, which Ascoli followed through newspaper clippings that he also kept with the materials. Generally, a correspondent enclosed a document along with a note or Ascoli received a reply from an institution with copies of the relevant documents. Items in this series are arranged alphabetically, and span the years 1915-2003 (bulk 1960-2003).

Series VII: Photographs, contains a framed picture of the Rosenwald extended family and an unframed photograph of Rosenwald in front of a carriage. There is a third picture that appears to be from one of Ascoli’s site visits but what exactly it depicts is unknown.

Related Resources

Arnett, Trevor. Papers, 1921-1932

Asher, Louis E. Papers, 1894-1914

Rosenwald, Julius. Papers, 1905-1963

Rosenwald, Samuel. Papers, 1830-1987

Swift, Harold. Papers, 1897-1962

Subject Headings

• Eastman, George, 1854-1932
• Flexner, Abraham, 1866-1959
• Hirsch, Emil Gustav, 1851-1923
• Rosenwald, Julius, 1862-1932
• Sears, Roebuck and Company
• Stern, Edgar Bloom, 1886-1959
• Washington, Booker T., 1856-1915
• General Education Board (New York, N.Y.)
• Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago, Ill.)
• African Americans--Education
• Philanthropists--United States
• Rosenwald schools

INVENTORY