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The Southern Israelite
Colonel Michael Friedsam Passes
Leading Merchant, Civic Worker, Art Collector,
Adviser of Governors and Presidents, Was
Little Known by General Public
By ROBERT STONE
The death of Col. Michael
Friedsam, President of B.
Altman and Company, and
one of the most picturesque
figures in present-day Amer
ica, removes a personality
whose influence in business,
civic affairs, and art institu
tions will become known
fully only years later. While
a Jew, the Colonel was in
terested in Jewish affairs in so
far as they came within his
wide range of interests in all
worthwhile causes, particu
larly in the cultural field.
A business man of the first water, a
sensitive connoisseur of art, an economist
and sociologist of genuine merit, an au
thority on civic questions and educational
problems who often acted as adviser to
Governors and Presidents, a generous
philanthropist, Col. Michael Friedsam,
who died at New York the other day,
was one of the most retiring and modest
personalities in America. As head of B.
Altman & Company, one of the most
exclusive of New York department stores,
lie was, willy-nilly, recognized as one of
the merchant princes of America’s me
tropolis; yet he succeeded, with his usual
efficiency, in avoiding all publicity that
might have placed him in the glare of the
public spotlight. When Colonel Friedsam
passed away and editors became busy
with gathering material for the elaborate
obituary which a man of his calibre de
served they realized that their file on
Colonel Friedsam was an almost empty
folder and that the biographic data at
their command were disappointingly mea
gre. It was impossible, for example, to
determine definitely the age of the de
ceased. Neither Who’s Who nor the
public relations department of the Altman
organization could supply the figures. It
had been an outstanding characteristic
of the Colonel to keep strictly to himself
all matters relating to his personal life.
His age concerned him alone, he told the
editors of a Who’s Who when they grew
insistent on the point of getting the date
of his birth. “I’m trying to forget it
myself," he added, smiling; and that end
ed the research work on this point.
According to the calculations of one
of his best friends, Mr. Frederick Cody,
one may state with reasonable safety that
Colonel Friedsam was born a little more
than seventy years ago at New York, of
German Jewish stock, the son of Morris
’
and Barbara Friedsam. From his child
hood on he gave evidence of a determi
nation to shape his own destiny, and after
finishing public school asked his parents
to send him to the Weston Military Acad
emy, at Weston, Conn. In one of the
rare moods when he would talk about
himself lie once explained to a friend
that the Military Academy attracted him
because of his great respect for discipline
and physical training. "These two quali
ties, discipline and health, are the sound
est basis for a useful life,” he remarked
on another occasion.
Almost the entire business career of
Michael Friedsam is identified with the
We Mourn
The late Col. Michael Friedsam,
whose death removed from the Ameri
can scene a business man of high
calibre, an economist of genuine merit,
and a civic leader of national repute.
growth of B. Altman & Company. When,
as a graduate of the Weston Military
Academy, he entered the store of B. Alt
man as a minor clerk, it was a retail
dry goods store of rather limited fame.
When he assumed the presidency of the
concern eighteen years ago, B. Altman
and Company was looked upon as one
of the most important retail mer
chandising institutions in the country.
The story of Friedsam’s steady climb
to the presidency of B. Altman and
Company—a story of which he never
spoke—is one of those business rom
ances one reads about in the careers
of the great figures of industry at the
turn of the century. His was a con
stant rise from one position to another,
his executive and organizing abilities
leaving their imprint on every depart
ment, his human qualities building a
loyal and devoted staff, his exquisite
and versatile taste making Altman’s,
gradually, into one of the most ex
clusive retail buying centers on this
continent. While his active interest in
the store continued almost to his death
—he was at his executive desk only a
few days before he died suddenly—his
love for artistic beauty in almost any
form made him one of the world’s
best-known figures in art circles. About
ten years ago lie built a costly art
gallery in his home at 44 Hast Sixty-
Eighth Street, New York, adding con
tinuously to his collection, which con
tains many of the immortal painters of
the Dutch, French, and Flemish art
schools. Collecting art treasures was
more than a hobby with Colonel Fried
sam. In the last twenty years of his
life it was perhaps his most vital in
terest.
It is this contrast and range of in
terests that is most fascinating in the
personality of Colonel Michael Fried
sam. His was almost a dual person
ality. On the one hand the efficiently
strict business man, stern disciplinarian,
ruthless organizer, sober and unerring
merchandising genius. On the other
hand Friedsam the dreamer, the art
collector who spent huge sums on pic
tures, whose greatest pleasure was to
wander alone moments in his and the
nation’s life when the stern merchand
iser and art-loving dreamer plunged
wholeheartedly into public activities—
avoiding, however, the publicized side.
Thus, during the world war, he held
the position of Quartermaster-General
in the New York State National Guard,
organizing and carrying out plans for
meatless, wheatless, and heatless days
for the state in order to husband the
resources of the American people. A
few years after the close of the war
he accepted, from President Harding, a
commission to make a special study of
commercial and economic conditions in
Europe.
So well did the quiet and self-ef
facing Colonel acquit himself of these
various missions that from then on he
was in constant demand for special
work of one kind or another in vari
ous departments of the state of fed
eral administrations. All these special
tasks Colonel Friedman carried out
cheerfully, giving of himself and his
time without thought of remuneration
or of compensation in honor. As a
matter of fact, he made it a condition
sine qua non that no publicity be given
out about his public missions.
Public education as a basis for the
improvement of general living
tions, attracted him above all. (,
Smith, who had come to appr< i
idealistic and wise personality
Fifth Avenue merchant, in 1925,
him at the head of a committee t
study the best methods of financing
schools in cities and rural districts and
the sources of revenue for this ;-i
In the spring of 1927 the Dick k
the result of the Friedsam Committee's
work, was signed, providing almoo
seventeen million dollars of additiot
state aid to New York schools
In addition to his other geiurou
philanthropic interests he, more than
any other individual, was respmisil
for the revived interest and expansu
of the Art Department of New York
University. The French government
made him a commander in the Legi«>i
of Honor because of the many service
he rendered in fostering Franco Ameri
can friendship as well as for his
structive interest in French art.
Should there come forward a bi
ographer who will evince interest ii
recreating the gifted, modest, somewhat
imperious personality of Michael 1 ri
sam, he will find himself taxed to the
utmost to collect even the most ele
mentary biographical material on I
subject. Of course, by tracing the late
merchant prince’s membership in i
many organizations to which
longed, he will surely come acros
most interesting data. He will iind tha
Colonel Friedsam was a mcmb
such varied organizations as the Arch
tectural League, the Museum of Fr<
Art, the Fifth Avenue Association (
which he was the President). the
French Institute of the United
the Metropolitan Museum of An
etc., and that these membership' were
never nominal. But, so to speak, they
were merely a part of his oftic
tivities.
Friedsam the man, who never mar
ried, who delighted in sending anonym
ous aid to private families, who gave
huge sums for institutions with the pre
vision that his name should not F men
tioned, who spent millions on He
and Dutch paintings and at the same
time would not hesitate to disc!
employe for a slight breach
pline—this Friedsam, this indie-
contrasts, who kept his person
and sorrows strictly to him><
perhaps never be known.
His death removes one of t
gifted and cultured business h
this country, and one of those
least known.
Copyright 1931 by S. A. F. S.
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