Elisabeth Severance Prentiss

Elisabeth Severance Prentiss or Mrs. Francis Fleury Prentiss (1865–1944) was an American philanthropist from Cleveland, Ohio.

Elisabeth Severance Prentiss
Portrait of Mrs. F.F. Prentiss by Philip de Laszlo, 1932
Born16 November 1865
Titusville, Pennsylvania, US
Died4 January 1944
Cleveland, Ohio, US
NationalityAmerican

Elisabeth Severance was born into a wealthy home as the daughter of the oil magnate Louis Severance and Fanny Benedict. She grew up in Cleveland and graduated at Wellesley College in 1887. She enjoyed the Boston galleries and returned to Cleveland to improve educational and arts-related institutions, joining her family in their philanthropic role as wealthy citizens of Cleveland. In 1892 she married the surgeon Dudley Peter Allen. Together they were interested in travel and supporting the medical community and the arts. After her father died in 1913 they used her inheritance to collect art and Dudley was on the committee to create an art museum at his alma mater Oberlin College. He died himself in 1915, and after his death Elisabeth commissioned the building from Cass Gilbert.[1] She built a large English manor styled home commissioned from another of his architect favorites, Charles F. Schweinfurth that she named after him, "Glenallen".[2] She also finished his work of expanding St. Luke's Hospital, which is how she met and married the president of that hospital, Dr. Francis Fleury Prentiss.[3] The couple continued to be trustees of the hospital, and she took over his president's position when he died. She enjoyed gardening and a climbing rose was named after her in 1925.[4] She was awarded with a public service medal by the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce in 1928.

Art collection

Her first husband was an expert in Chinese porcelain.[5]

  • 1736 Chinese vase
  • 1723 Chinese vase

Her brother John Long Severance, died in 1936, leaving her as sole heir of the Severance legacy. Her brother had been a collector of tapestries and paintings.[6] She commissioned a catalogue of his bequest.[7]

  • Aeneas says Farewell to Dido, Michael Wauters, 1679
  • The Death of Dido, Michael Wauters, 1679

She owned several portraits of women:

Works

She is buried in Lake View Cemetery.[8]

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References
  1. The Dudley Peter Allen Memorial Art Building at Oberlin College, The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 4, no. 5, 1917, pp. 86–92 on Jstor
  2. Glen Allen Estate on Cleveland Historical website
  3. Glen Allen on website of Cleveland Heights Historical Society
  4. Hybrids of Rosa Setigera
  5. Dudley Peter Allen and Elisabeth Severance Allen Prentiss in the Frick Collection archives
  6. John Long Severance in the Frick Collection archives
  7. Catalogue of the John L. Severance collection : bequest of John L. Severance, 1936, forward by William M. Milliken, Cleveland Museum of Art, 1942
  8. Elisabeth Allen Prentiss on find-a-grave


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