J. Horace Harding


James Horace Harding was an American banker, financier and art collector.

Early life

Harding was born on July 13, 1863 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a son of publisher William White Harding and Catherine Badger Harding. Among his siblings was sister Jessie Harding, and brothers Edward Harding and William G. Harding, who Horace provided support for in his will.
His paternal grandparents were Maria Harding and Jesper Harding, who had owned The Pennsylvania Inquirer and National Gazette. After his grandfather retired from publishing in 1859, his father became publisher and changed the paper's name to The Philadelphia Inquirer. His uncle, George Harding, became a patent lawyer and argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. His maternal grandparents were James Hankinson Hart and Catherine Louise Hart.

Career

Harding entered the banking field when he was twenty years old. After his 1898 marriage, he entered the New York banking investment firm of Charles D. Barney & Co. The firm was founded by Barney in 1873 after his father-in-law's firm, Jay Cooke & Company went under during the Panic of 1873. Upon Barney's retirement in 1907, Harding ran the business under the same name, as senior partner, with Henry E. Butler, Jay Cooke III, and Charles S. Phillips. In 1919, he stepped down as senior partner and became a special partner. In 1938, Charles D. Barney & Co. and Edward B. Smith & Co. merged to form Smith, Barney & Co.
In November 1923, he succeeded Burns D. Caldwell as chairman of the board of the American Express Company, having been closely associated with George C. Taylor during the founding of the company and being a member of the board of the executive committee ever since. Harding also served as a director of the American Exchange Irving Trust Company, the American Gas and Electric Company, the Cerro de Pasco Copper Company, the Continental Can Company, the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, the Southern Pacific Company, the United States Industrial Alcohol Company, the Ann Arbor Railroad, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, the New York, Ontario and Western Railway, the Wabash Railway, the New York Municipal Railways System, and was a trustee of the American Surety Company.
Harding supported the development of Long Island's roadways and was a proponent of Robert Moses' parkway plan. He personally commissioned engineering studies to promote the construction of a highway from Queens Boulevard to Nassau County, in order to provide better access to Oakland Country Club, where he was a member and avid golfer. The road was built during Mayor Jimmy Walker's administration and was opened in 1928 as Nassau Boulevard.
In 1917, he paid $100,000 for the construction of Harding Road, to connect Broad Street in Red Bank with Ridge Road in Rumson, in Monmouth County, New Jersey. He was also a member of the board of governors of the Long Branch Hospital since 1914.

Personal life

In 1898, Harding was married to Dorothea Elizabeth Allen Barney. She was a daughter of Charles D. Barney and Laura Barney, a daughter of Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke. They were the parents of four children:
Harding died of influenza on January 4, 1929 at 955 Fifth Avenue, his townhouse in Manhattan. After a funeral at St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue, he was buried at Saint Paul's Episcopal Churchyard in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. He left his fortune to his family. His widow died in 1935.

Art collection

Harding "was long interested in art and devoted considerable of his time to the work of the Frick collection," and served as a trustee of the art that was bequeathed to New York City by his friend, Henry Clay Frick. In 1912, the Hardings returned to New York from Liverpool aboard the Mauretania after touring Egypt with Frick. Frick, who was supposed to sail with them, relinquished his berth at the last moment and decided to stay in London where he purchased two Paolo Veronese canvases, Allegory of Virtue and Vice and Allegory of Wisdom and Strength, for which Frick paid Knoedler & Co $200,000.
They owned the Portrait of Mrs. Freeman Jr. by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Margaretta Henrietta, Lady Hepburn by Sir Henry Raeburn, St. Paul by Doménikos Theotokópoulos, and Miss Julia Mott by Thomas Gainsborough In 1916, Harding purchased the 1810 portrait of Victor Guye by Francisco de Goya. In 1941, this painting, and others from his collection were sold in 1941 by his children via Parke-Bernet. The Goya portrait was bought by William Nelson Cromwell for the National Gallery of Art.
In 1927, he commissioned Oswald Birley to make a portrait of President Plutarco Elías Calles of Mexico, which he presented to the Mexican government.

Legacy

In May 1929, four months after Harding's death, the road was named Horace Harding Boulevard in his honor. In 1939, the New York City Council proposed renaming Horace Harding Boulevard to Worlds Fair Boulevard due to the New York World's Fair, but Mayor Fiorello La Guardia refused to remove the name of his friend. Today, it is the section between Queens Boulevard and the Queens-Nassau county line of the Long Island Expressway and is known as New York State Route 25D.
He was also the namesake of the Horace Harding Hospital in Elmhurst, Queens and Horace Harding Playground, located in the Queens neighborhood of Rego Park. There is also a bas-relief bust of Harding on a three-sided parcel of land at the intersection of Harding Road and Ridge Road in Little Silver, near Thornton, Harding's summer home in Rumson, New Jersey.