Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

Joseph Green Butler Jr. (December 21, 1840 – December 20, 1927) was an American industrialist, philanthropist, and popular historian. He is remembered primarily for establishing the first museum in the United States dedicated solely to American art.

Early years

He was born in the industrial town of Temperance Furnace, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, the son of Joseph Green and Temperance (Orwig) Butler. His family's presence in the country is traced back to the period preceding the American Revolution. Joseph G. Butler Jr.'s Anglo-Irish ancestors emigrated from the vicinity of Dublin to colonial America in 1759. According to Joseph G. Butler Jr.'s obituary, his father, Joseph Green Butler, was a "widely known iron manufacturer and blast furnace expert". His grandfather, Joseph Butler, established the first blast furnace in central Pennsylvania.

Industrial career Butler became involved in the iron business at the age of 30. In 1892, he joined local industrialist Henry Wick in the organization of the Ohio Steel Company, which built two Bessemer plants along the Mahoning River, just northwest of Youngstown. The company went into production in 1895, only to be sold four years later to the Pittsburgh-based National Steel Company.

Scarcely more than three decades after Butler's death, Time magazine published a feature story which described the art museum as "booming". In a passage that praised the late industrialist's vision as well as its realization, the magazine's editors wrote: "To set the strictly American tone of the place, he planted a befeathered bronze Indian in front of the $500,000 colonnaded building designed by the Manhattan firm of McKim, Mead & White. With Youngstown University nearby, the two blocks surrounding the museum soon developed into the cultural strip of the U.S.'s third biggest steel center". A memorial service held at the Butler Institute of American Art featured a eulogy delivered by Youngstown educator O. L. Reid. The speaker highlighted Butler's rare combination of pragmatism and artistic sensibility when he stated, "His fathers were iron masters and surely in some of them must have been a keen rush of joy before the sheer beauty of the white flame of their furnaces". Butler's funeral services were held at St. John's Episcopal Church, in Youngstown, and his remains were interred at Belmont Park Cemetery, in nearby Liberty, Ohio.