Larz Kilgour Anderson (1866-1937)
Larz Anderson, U.S. Diplomat & Ambassador, of Brookline & Washington D.C.
He was born in Paris while his parents were on honeymoon. He was a great-grandson of both Nicholas Longworth, Cincinnati's first millionaire, and Lt.-Col. Richard Clough Anderson, a Charter Member of the Society of the Cincinnati. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy before graduating from Harvard (1888) and then travelled the world for a year-and-a-half. In 1891, Robert Todd Lincoln appointed him Second Secretary at the Court of St. James in London; and, from 1894 to 1897, he was First Secretary and Chargé d'Affaires of the American embassy in Rome. He returned to Foreign Service in 1911 as U.S. Minister to Belgium before being appointed U.S. Minister to Japan the following year but served for only one day, replaced by the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson. His career thereafter lay dormant and he was unsuccessful in his bid for the Ambassadorship to Rome in 1923.
According to his biographer, Anderson's diplomatic record was an embarrassment to President William Howard Taft. Historian George E. Mowry wrote that he, "never allowed his official duties to interfere with his lengthy and verbose unofficial reporting of society's meaningless activities... if the selections published are a true sample of the bulk of the writings that Mr. Anderson chose to preserve for posterity, they say little for the author and as little for the government that hired him for responsible positions".
In 1897, at Boston, Anderson married the heiress Isabel Weld Perkins, grand-daughter of the shipping magnate William Fletcher Weld, of Boston. They had no children, but dedicated their lives to art, architecture, travel, philanthropy and high society. They travelled extensively at home and abroad, collecting art and objets d'art and expanding the mansion and gardens at their summer home "Weld" in Brookline, Massachusetts (now the Larz Anderson Park). They funded the construction of the Anderson Memorial Bridge (in memory of his father) across the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge, and funded the construction and interior decoration of the Lady Chapel of the Washington National Cathedral. They gifted their mansion in Washington D.C., Larz Anderson House, to the Society of the Cincinnati which remains their headquarters today.
According to his biographer, Anderson's diplomatic record was an embarrassment to President William Howard Taft. Historian George E. Mowry wrote that he, "never allowed his official duties to interfere with his lengthy and verbose unofficial reporting of society's meaningless activities... if the selections published are a true sample of the bulk of the writings that Mr. Anderson chose to preserve for posterity, they say little for the author and as little for the government that hired him for responsible positions".
In 1897, at Boston, Anderson married the heiress Isabel Weld Perkins, grand-daughter of the shipping magnate William Fletcher Weld, of Boston. They had no children, but dedicated their lives to art, architecture, travel, philanthropy and high society. They travelled extensively at home and abroad, collecting art and objets d'art and expanding the mansion and gardens at their summer home "Weld" in Brookline, Massachusetts (now the Larz Anderson Park). They funded the construction of the Anderson Memorial Bridge (in memory of his father) across the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge, and funded the construction and interior decoration of the Lady Chapel of the Washington National Cathedral. They gifted their mansion in Washington D.C., Larz Anderson House, to the Society of the Cincinnati which remains their headquarters today.
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Contributed by Mark Meredith on 19/12/2022 and last updated on 23/12/2022.