Julian Wheeler Curtiss

Julian Wheeler Curtiss (1858–1944), was president of the Spalding sports equipment company and a pioneering promoter of golf in the United States.[1]

Julian W. Curtiss

Early life

Curtiss was born in Fairfield, Connecticut, on August 29, 1858. Among his siblings was older brother, Edwin Burr Curtiss, a lawyer and later, bookseller.[2]

He attended Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut and the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. He graduated from Yale University in 1879, where he had been active in various sports, crew especially. (Future President William Howard Taft was also at the university at this time.)

Career

Curtiss joined the A.G. Spalding Company after college. In 1885 he became secretary of the company, and in 1920 president. He retired from the presidency in 1933, but remained on the board, serving as its chair until 1938.[3]

On a trip to London in 1892 to buy leather to make footballs in the U.S., he was introduced to golf. He brought home with him $400 worth of equipment and started the first manufacture of golf equipment in the United States.[4] In 1892 with his brother, Edwin Burr Curtiss, and others he started the Fairfield County Golf Club, today known as the Greenwich Country Club.[5] Curtiss served as the club's first President, from 1892–96, and again from 1921-34.[6]

Curtiss was affiliated with the Amateur Athletic Union and became treasurer of the American Olympic Committee. He was one of the figures, together with Walter Camp and others, responsible at the turn of the twentieth century with popularizing sports in the U.S. and making it a central part of American culture.[7] He designed the first basketball in association with James Naismith, the inventor of the game. From 1902 to 1911 he served as graduate coach of the Yale crew team, turning out five championship outfits, and from 1918 to 1940, he refereed many of the foremost crew races in the East.[8]

Personal life

In October 1880, Curtiss married Mary Louise Case, daughter of Joseph S. Case of New York.[9] They settled in Greenwich, Connecticut where Curtiss commissioned the architects Carrère and Hastings, who had also designed the original clubhouse for the Greenwich Country Club, to build him a house.[10]. Together, Julian and Mary had four children.[11]

He was very active in Greenwich, serving as the first president of the Greenwich YMCA. He also served on the Greenwich Board of Education from 1913 to 1937, chairing it from 1924 to 1937.[12]

He died at Greenwich Hospital on February 17, 1944.[13]

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References
  1. Obituary from Golfdom, 1944
  2. "Edwin Burr Curtiss" (PDF). The New York Times. March 31, 1928. Retrieved August 21, 2019.
  3. Obituary from Golfdom, 1944
  4. "Spalding". Time magazine. February 18, 1929. Retrieved 2009-11-27. And back in the days when the golfer was viewed with scornful alarm, Mr. Julian W. Curtiss, now Spalding president (Mr. Spalding died in 1915), visited London, learned golf, returned with the clubs and balls from which resulted the manufacture of early U. S. golf equipment.
  5. "Fairfield County Golf Club". The Connecticut magazine. 1900. Retrieved 2009-11-27. The Fairfield County Golf Club at Greenwich is one of the best known in the state and it contains some excellent golfers. The incorporators of the club are Julian W. Curtiss, John H. Boswell, James McCutcheon, Edward K. ... Edwin B. Curtiss ...
  6. Website of the Greenwich Country Club
  7. Dyreson, Mark (1998). Making the American team: Sport, Culture, and the Olympic Experience. University of Illinois Press.
  8. Obituary from Golfdom, 1944
  9. "A Wedding in Dr. Taylor's Church" (PDF). The New York Times. 13 October 1880. Retrieved 21 August 2019.
  10. "The Work of Carrère and Hastings," in Architectural Record (1910).
  11. Bio from the Greenwich Public Schools website
  12. Bio from the Greenwich Public Schools website
  13. Obituary from Golfdom, 1944
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