Charles M. Loring

Charles Morgridge Loring (November 13, 1833 – March 18, 1922) was an American businessman, miller and publicist. Raised in Maine to be a sea captain, Loring instead became a civic leader in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he was a wealthy flour miller and in Riverside, California where he helped to build the first city hall. He was a popular and generous man who enjoyed many friendships and business associations. Considered the "Father of the Park System" in Minneapolis, Loring encouraged the city to work with Horace Cleveland, one of the first landscape architects, and park superintendents William W. Berry and Theodore Wirth. The city built what has been called, "the best-located, best-financed, best-designed, and best-maintained public open space in America."

Family and early life Loring's grandfather was a respected teacher in Portland, Maine known as Master Loring, a descendant of one of the earliest settlers of Hingham, Massachusetts. Charles himself was a fifth great grandson of Hingham immigrant Deacon Thomas Loring. His mother was Sarah Wiley, a relative of Parson Wiley, a noted clergyman. His father Captain Horace Loring, a seaman who once visited the West Indies, took the young Loring on voyages as far from home as Cuba to prepare him for a life as a sea captain. But Loring disliked the ocean and the isolation and moved to Chicago in 1856 where he worked as a wheat speculator for B. P. Hutchinson and became a successful grain trader.

Florence Loring participated in civic affairs and was a quilter whose Crazy Quilt is in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The Lorings constructed the Florence Barton Loring Shelter in 1906 to protect children, lost animals and the city's draft horses. Known at different times as the Minneapolis Humane Society, the Animal Rescue League, and the Animal Humane Society of Hennepin County, today's Animal Humane Society (AHS) was located there near Loring Park for 40 years. Florence Loring also built a home for nurses near the hospital in Riverside, California where the Lorings lived in winter. Loring understood the city's geography—its waterfalls, lakes and river banks—and was able to use these unique aspects of his new home to slowly build his fortune.

In 1861, Loring joined Fletcher in L. Fletcher & Co., a general store specializing in supplies for lumbermen on Nicollet Avenue across from Minneapolis City Hall where they prospered for fifteen years. They joined with W. F. Cahill to convert the municipal waterworks building into a flour mill run on hydropower, the smallest in the Mississippi west bank milling district. With George Hineline they added three limestone stories and operated it as the W. F. Cahill & Co. Holly mill. During this period, Loring served in the city government, first as road supervisor and in 1872 as a Minneapolis City Council member from the Fifth Ward in the Near North community. In 1873 Fletcher and Loring also became principal owners of the Minnetonka Mills Company near Lake Minnetonka, in production between 1881 and 1886. Loring supervised his milling interests until 1880, when his son A. C. Loring took responsibility for their management. By the early 1900s and until the Great Depression, Washburn-Crosby which became General Mills, Pillsbury-Washburn, and Northwestern which became part of Standard Milling Company were an oligopoly, holding 97% of the Minneapolis flour market.

Electricity and rail

Through his business associations, Loring contributed to major advances in the infrastructure of Minneapolis, to supply electricity, as a director of a railroad, and as chief executive of the North American Telegraph Company. In 1881 with William D. Washburn, Joel Bean Bassett, Sumner W. Farnham, James A. Lovejoy and Otis Arkwright Pray, Fletcher and Loring co-founded the Minnesota Electric Light and Electric Motive Power Company, later the Minnesota Brush Electric Company. The group ran lines to bars and businesses on Washington Avenue and supplied them from the first hydroelectric central power plant in the U.S., thirteen years before the Niagara Falls plant went on line in 1894. In 1883 with Washburn, Martin, H. T. Welles, Thomas Lowry, George R. Newell, Anthony Kelly, Clinton Morrison, J. K. Sidle, W. W. Eastman, William D. Hale, Charles A. Pillsbury and Charles J. Martin, Loring incorporated the Minneapolis Sault Ste. Marie & Atlantic Railway Company known as the Soo Line Railroad.

Other associations

Loring also owned real estate and was a director of Syndicate Insurance Co., the Minnesota Title Insurance Co. and the Minnesota Loan and Trust Co. which eventually became part of today's Wells Fargo. The first Minnesota Flower Show was held July 4, 1863 and was organized by Loring who was a member of the Minnesota Horticultural Society. He co-founded the Minnesota Homœopathic Medical College which opened in 1886. Loring acted as president of the Minneapolis Board of Trade in 1875 and from 1886 to 1890 served as president of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, renamed the Minneapolis Grain Exchange.

Loring cofounded the Morgan Machine Co. in Rochester, New York. He served as president of the Minnesota Forestry Association, the National Park and Outdoor Association, the Lakewood Cemetery Association, and the Sons of Maine and as vice president of the National Board of Trade.

Horace Cleveland

Horace Cleveland made his "crowning achievement" in Minneapolis at the end of his career, in part thanks to "kindred spirits." William Watts Folwell who was the founding president of the University of Minnesota, and Berry and Loring, both from Maine, were all united in their love for nature. The system Cleveland created is characterized by the use of indigenous plants in their natural environment and by the linking of open spaces and landmarks across distance with boulevards and parkways. Cleveland had thought about linked public open spaces as early as 1855. In 1888, Cleveland presented The Aesthetic Development of the United Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis at the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts and convinced the city to preserve the waterfall and to build a city park there. In the 1890s, Cleveland's Minnehaha Park was annexed to Minneapolis and completed the Grand Rounds. Today Minnehaha Park sees 850,000 visitors each year. Named by Folwell, the 52-mile (83 km) Grand Rounds circles from Northeast, Minneapolis to Theodore Wirth Park, to the Chain of Lakes and follows the Mississippi River upstream past Minnehaha Falls to downtown.

Theodore Wirth At the 1889 meeting of the American Park and Outdoor Art Association, held in Minneapolis, Loring read Cleveland's The Influence of Parks on the Character of Children. He wrapped "sixty miles of picturesque parkways around the City like an emerald ribbon." Wirth planned a playground within the reach of most children and canopies of trees throughout the city.

Minneapolis park assets as of 2004 included the following. 144 of the parks were in place when Wirth retired in 1935.

Legacies alt=Large monument between two trees, inscribed "Charles M. Loring/Father of the Parks". Loring's grave is center left of four visible. Formerly Central Park, Loring Park in the Central community is designed by Cleveland on the site of the Joseph Johnson farm. It was dedicated May 5, 1883 and renamed for Loring in or near his final year as park board president. Loring Lake, formerly Johnson Lake, was also named for Loring as is the Loring Stage House, originally Loring's office.

In California, Loring Drive in Huntington Park and Loring's building in Riverside bore his name. In Minneapolis, the Loring Elementary School in the Camden community, the Loring Nicollet Alternative School in the Stevens Square neighborhood, the Loring Pasta Bar in Dinkytown as well as other businesses carry his name. The Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board's Charles M. Loring Award is named in his memory. The Camp Fire Girls planted a spruce tree in his memory on the south shore of Lake Harriet.

In honor of Charles M. Loring Treelover And Civic Enthusiast Let dead names be eternalized by dead stones Let living names by living shafts be known: Plant thou a tree whose griefless leaves shall sing Thy deed and thee, each fresh unfolding spring