The Elkins Family
William L. Elkins
While William L. Elkins was one of the most influential Philadelphia citizens at the turn of the century, his legacy is largely unknown, despite the tremendous impact he affected on the electric, oil, and transportation industries throughout the City.Elkins was largely responsible for the production of the first gasoline ever refined from petroleum at Philadelphia’s Monument Oil Works, which was established and operated by Elkins until his partnership with John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil Company in 1875. William Elkins pioneered the consolidation of regional electric companies into what is PECO today.As one of PECO’s founding Board Members, he was instrumental in the mergers of various and sundry gas and electric utilities, and his estate was one of the first homes in America to be electrified with its own on-site power station.
With long-time friend and business partner Peter A.B. Widener, Elkins took the Philadelphia transportation system by storm, consolidating the trolleys and trains, extending routes into the suburbs, and changing the way the city moved.The Elkins Widener syndicate rapidly earned them the nickname the “Tractions Twins,” and upon Elkins’ death in 1903, all traffic in the city halted for a moment to honor him; the first and only occasion this was done in Philadelphia’s history.
Elkins served on over 100 Boards of Directors, including some that forged the groundwork for such major modern day business as Septa, PECO, PGW, Exide Battery, and General Electric, a few of the most notable of which are:
·Philadelphia Rapid Transit
·Pennsylvania Railroad Company
·United Gas Improvement Company
·Edison Electric Light Company
·Philadelphia Electric Company
·Electric Storage Battery Company
Always a philanthropist and patron of the arts, Elkins made several donations and bequests that had a tremendous impact on the City of Philadelphia and its cultural development.He donated one million dollars to the Masonic Home for Girls, now known as Prince Hall, and bequeathed his art collection to the city in 1903, the first exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and his collection of rare books and library interior of his Girard Street mansion before its demolition, which was moved intact to the Free Library of Philadelphia and still houses its Rare Book Collection.
George Elkins
George W. Elkins, Sr., William L. Elkins oldest son, followed in his father’s footsteps of philanthropy through the donation of his own extensive art collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art along with a monetary bequest of $500,000.This bequest spurred the design and construction of the renowned P.M.A., also a Horace Trumbauer design, in its current location on the Parkway.
In the early 1900s, Abington was a rural town with the nearest hospital being eight miles away. Injured residents faced this trip on rough roads, usually in horse-drawn carts or buggies. Having one of the area's first cars, George Elkins was occasionally asked to transport patients. Legend has it that one of his passengers died en route. Recognizing the need for a hospital in Abington, he arranged a town meeting.
On May 7, 1912, community members gathered and passed a resolution to establish Abington General Hospital. Elkins donated land and money for the new building in memory of his wife, Stella McIntire Elkins, and the hospital was renamed in her honor. On May 15, 1914, Abington Memorial Hospital opened to the community.
Stella Elkins Tyler
The Tyler Campus was part of the original Elkins Estate complex and was given to George Elkins’ daughter, Stella, as a wedding gift upon her marriage to George Frederick Tyler.The family commissioned famed architect Horace Trumbauer to design and build the Tyler mansion, Georgian Terrace, on this parcel in 1905.An acclaimed sculptor by her own right, Stella Elkins Tyler duplicated the generosity and philanthropy of family patriarchs William L. Elkins and George Elkins with the donation of her corner of the magnificent estate to Temple University in the 1934 to use as a school for the arts.The building and grounds later became Temple’s Stella Elkins Tyler School of Art.
Tyler was almost fifty years old when she began to work as a serious sculptor in the early 1930s. Her mentor was Boris Blai, a former student of the famous French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. She had her first solo exhibition of sculpture at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York City in 1935. In 1959, the Woodmere Art Gallery in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, hosted her third and last such show. Over the course of these two-and-a-half decades, she displayed approximately one-hundred-and-fifty different sculptural designs, most relatively small, but some close to life-size. Eventually, she had nearly all of her compositions cast into bronze by the Roman Bronze Works, a major foundry located in Corona, New York. The vast majority of her bronzes are one of a kind.