Mary Duke Biddle

Mary Lillian Duke Biddle (November 16, 1887 – June 14, 1960) was an American philanthropist.[1]

Mary Lillian Duke Biddle
Born
Mary Lillian Duke

(1887-11-16)November 16, 1887
DiedJune 14, 1960(1960-06-14) (aged 72)
Spouse(s)Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle, Jr.
ChildrenMary Duke Biddle Trent Semans
Nicholas Benjamin Duke Biddle
Parent(s)Benjamin Newton Duke
Sarah Pearson Angier

Early life

She was born as Mary Lillian Duke on November 16, 1887, to Benjamin Newton Duke in Durham, North Carolina. She attended Durham's Trinity College, the institutional predecessor of Duke University, which was named in honor of her family. She graduated in 1907 with a degree in English.

She was a great enthusiast for the arts and traveled frequently with her family to New York City for the theater and opera, later becoming an accomplished singer and musician.[2] In 1912 she was engaged to Prince Ludovic Pignatelli d'Aragon, an Italian nobleman, who tried to kill himself after the marriage was cancelled.[3][4]

Around 1918, she was given her father's brick-and-limestone Beaux-Arts townhouse on Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street. It was built in 1901 and is now known as the Benjamin N. Duke House.[5] It is one of only nine surviving mansions on Fifth Avenue.

Biddle in 1916

Marriage and later life

Her marriage to Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr. in 1915 ended in divorce in 1931. Their children were Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans and Nicholas Benjamin Duke Biddle.

She and her husband owned an estate, "Linden Court", in Tarrytown, New York, bought from the William R. Harris family in 1921. It still stands today as the Tarrytown House Estate and Conference Center.[6][7]

She established the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation in 1956. Since then, the foundation has donated more than $28 million in grants to non-profit organizations.

The Foundation commissioned American composer Norman Dello Joio to write a piece for the Duke University Band and its conductor Paul Bryan titled Variants on a Medieval Tune based on the melody In dulci jubilo. It was first performed on April 10, 1963.

The Mary Duke Biddle Estate at Durham, North Carolina, was her home from 1935 until her death in 1960. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.[8][9]

Notes
  1. "A Washington Duke genealogy as it pertains to Duke University" - Duke University Libraries
  2. "North Carolina School of the Arts Receives $100,000 Grant from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation to Endow Opera Scholarship" Archived 2006-09-06 at the Wayback Machine - Press release, February 4, 2002.
  3. "Prince Pignatelli wins a $60,000,000 heiress". The Salt Lake Tribune. April 28, 1912.
  4. "Distressing Progress of Prince Pignatelli's "Perfect Romance"". Richmond Times-Dispatch. September 30, 1917.
  5. The house was one of a group of four built by the speculative builders William and Thomas Hall to designs by Alexander McMillan Welch of Welch, Smith and Provot; 1009 Fifth Avenue was purchased by Mr Biddle. It was granted landmark status in 1974, and was sold in 2005 by her daughter, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans; the eventual purchaser, after a deal had been concluded with Tamir Sapir, was Carlos Slim Helú, Mexican billionaire ("Sale of Duke Mansion Brings a Lawsuit", New York Times 20 December 2010, accessed 12 January 2911.
  6. Tarrytown House property history
  7. "History Center at Dolce Tarrytown House" Archived 2008-08-20 at the Wayback Machine, Half Moon Press newspaper, November, 2003 issue
  8. Betsy Gohdes-Baten (February 2012). "Mary Duke Biddle Estate" (pdf). National Register of Historic Places - Nomination and Inventory. North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office. Retrieved 2014-10-01.
  9. "National Register of Historic Places Listings". Weekly List of Actions Taken on Properties: 1/07/13 through 1/11/13. National Park Service. 2013-01-18.
gollark: What do Linux users do to change a lightbulb?First, a user creates a bug report, only for it to be closed with "could not reproduce" as the developers got to it in the day. Eventually, some nights later, someone realizes that it is actually a problem, and decides to start work on a fix, soliciting the help of other people.Debates soon break out on the architecture of the new lightbulb - should they replace it with an incandescent bulb (since the bulb which broke was one of those), try and upgrade it to a halogen or LED bulb, which are technically superior if more complex. or go to a simpler and perhaps more reliable solution such as a fire?While an LED bulb is decided on, they eventually, after yet more debate, deem off-the-shelf bulbs unsuitable, and decide to make their own using commercially available LED modules. However, some of the group working on this are unhappy with this, and splinter off, trying to set up their own open semiconductor production operation to produce the LEDs.Despite delays introduced by feature creep, as it was decided halfway through to also add RGB capability and wireless control, the main group still manages to produce an early alpha, and tests it as a replacement for the original bulb. Unfortunately it stops working after a few days of use, and debugging of the system suggests that the problem is because of their power supply - the bulb needs complex, expensive, and somewhat easily damaged circuitry to convert the mains AC power into DC suitable for the LEDs, and they got that bit a bit wrong.So they decide to launch their own power grid and lighting fixture standard, which is, although incompatible with every other device, technically superior, and integrates high-speed networking so they can improve the control hardware. Having completely retrofitted the house the original lightbulb failed in and put all their designs and code up on GitHub, they deem the project a success, and after only a year!
gollark: Minetest is already a thing.
gollark: It really isn't.
gollark: Most people of my generation just use popular social media apps on a locked down phone of some sort and may not know what a "file" or "terminal" or "potatOS" is.
gollark: It is, yes.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.