Abby Aldrich Rockefeller: The Woman in the Family Book

This is the story of the woman who transformed the character of one of America's most powerful families and then, as a pioneering museum founder, helped open the nation's eyes to modern art. In 1894 Abby Aldrich, the buoyant, impulsive daughter of Senator Nelson Aldrich, met John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the awesomely reserved heir to the Standard Oil fortune. This unlikely pair fell in love, but it was seven years before John felt confident enough to propose. "She was so gay and young and so in love with everything," he later recalled, "that l kept wondering why she ever consented to marry a man like me." But she did marry him, and her intuitive understanding of people, her willingness to experiment, her defiant optimism, became the leavening in John's narrow, bureaucratic way of thinking. She expanded his vision of what the tremendous Rockefeller fortune could do, shaping the family into the progressive force in philanthropy, the arts, and politics that we know today. Drawing on letters and diaries and revealing interviews with family members and others, Bernice Kert has created a portrait of this vibrant woman that is both intimate and sweeping, that moves from the intricacies of her homelife to her work in larger arenas. Abby cherished and protected her six children - Babs, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David - and inspired in them a desire to serve society. She struggled to balance their needs against the insistent demands of a husband who felt abandoned if her attention wavered. She furnished and managed the Rockefeller houses, sometimes four at a time, and built a hotel for working women and a community center for immigrant families. From behind the scenes she helped direct some of the mighty Rockefeller projects, from the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg to the building of Rockefeller Center. And she supported and was nurtured by a wonderful network of women, including her blunt, deaf sister, Lucy, the landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, th

The first complete biography of the founder of New York City's Museum of Modern Art. In 1901, Abby Aldrich married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and set about transforming the fabulously wealthy but closed-minded Rockefellers into the progressive force in philanthropy, the arts, and politics we know today. Photos.