|
Adolph and his parents were born in Hungary and
immigrated to America in 1862. In 1903 he
lived with his two sons, three daughters and two of
their spouses at 4233 Prairie▼2 in Chicago, a
still-standing ten-room beauty in the Grand Blvd
area, built in 1898. His wife, the late Fannie
Weber, had passed in 1895.
Adolph was the son of Abraham and Fannie Fischel Weber. His late wife was also named Fannie, Fannie
Kahn (1844–1895). Before retirement he'd been a tailor, liquor merchant and
president of Calumet Furniture.
In the years after the fire
In mid-1909, six years after the Iroquois Theater fire, Adolph and Leona filed suit against Marc Klaw
and Abraham Erlanger, seeking $10,000 in damages for Adolph and $25,000 for Leona. Nothing more
was reported about their lawsuits but it is unlikely they prevailed given that dozens of others were
dismissed in the Federal Court.
A grandchild reports that disfiguring burn scars on her hands and
face made Leona camera-shy for the rest of her life. He describes her as a warm and loving
person.
Adolph died seven years before Leona's marriage.
His obituary reported that he had been a charter member of the David Fish Lodge #130 of the Independent Order of
B'nai B'rith
(I.O.B.B.), as well as a member of the Austrian-Hungary Benevolent Society.▼3
Marriage
In 1917 at age twenty-seven, in services held at her sister Clara's mansion on Michigan
Avenue, Leona married Henry Baum, a German immigrant from
Kansas City, MO.
A year later, their only child was born, Marjorie Lee Baum (pictured above). Henry died at age fifty-nine,
and Leona spent the last three decades of her life as a widow. At her death, only one of her seven
siblings survived.
|
|
Furniture was the family business
For over forty years in Chicago the Weber-Greenwald names were associated with furniture.
Adolph Weber served as president of Calumet Furniture. Another of his daughters, Clara
Weber, in 1899 married Joseph Greenwald who built the General Furniture Company in Chicago. (Brother Emanuel
Weber, also married a Greenwald.) Leona's later husband, Henry Baum, would eventually work for
Joseph in his furniture company and Adolph's son, Edward, rose to become a vice president at General
Furniture before going out on his own in 1935.▼4 By 1933 General Furniture had
grown to twelve large stores and was promoted as "Chicago's Greatest Chain of Furniture
Stores." The Greenwald's prosperity led to a
14-room mansion
at 5131 Michigan in the Washington Park neighborhood.▼5 Following the death
of Joseph B. Greenwald in 1929, and Clara in 1940, their children sold the chain to a company outside Chicago.
Travel and clerking
In 1921 Leona and her daughter traveled to Cuba to visit her sister Carolyn Weber who was
working in Havana for Banco Mercantil.
In the 1950s, widowed, Leona worked part time
as a sales clerk in a women's clothing store, Einhorn's on 63rd St..
|
|
Discrepancies and addendum
The Greenwald relatives mentioned here do not appear to have been related to another family of Iroquois victims, the Joseph Greenwald family.
1.
Newspaper reports immediately after the fire confused names, addresses and relationships between Adoph and
Leona Weber with another pair of victims —
John and Carrie
Weber. 1904 newspapers reported that
Adolph's wounds came as he tried to save his wife. Adolph's wife Fannie had been gone for eight years
in 1903 and I found no evidence of his having
remarried. The story was therefore about John Weber trying to rescue his wife, Carrie, or Adolph Weber,
trying to rescue his daughter, Leona.
Some early newspapers incorrectly reported Leona's age as sixteen.
2.
Initially, some Chicago newspapers reported that Adolph and/or Leona lived at non-existent addresses on
Cortland and Courtland streets but later reports had
them at their actual address at the time, 4233 Prairie.
3. The David Fish Lodge was
organized in 1869 as the Jonathan Lodge; the name
later changed in honor of charter member, David
Fish. The membership in 1910 was around 400.
4. In 1935, Edward Weber
formed the Weber-Kushen furniture Company by
purchasing the Edward Zagel Furniture Company,
located at 6201 S. Halsted at the corner of 62nd
street. A second store opened in 1939.
In the 1940s, he brought together nine other Chicago
stores to form the Style Crest Association, a buyers
syndicate.
5. The home sold in 1922 to Harry M. Grabiner, secretary of the Chicago
American League ball club.
|
