Harry Clinton Goodrich:
Eccentric Inventor and Wright Client
Like many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early clients, Harry C. Goodrich was a creative, intelligent, and enterprising individualist. He could also have been described as an eccentric. A father of twelve children (including a daughter who became an nationally-renowned actress), a vegetarian (decades before it was popular), a music publisher, and an inventor who patented nearly a hundred imaginative products and devices, Goodrich made and lost a fortune during his lifetime. Harry and his wife Louisa M. Goodrich were both in their sixties in 1896 when they hired Wright to design a home for them in Oak Park.
Portrait of H.C. Goodrich. ca. 1890, University of Chicago Adelaide Eunice Goodrich Collection.
Born in Potsdam, New York, Harry Clinton Goodrich (1832-1926) moved west with his family during his early childhood. Soon after settling in St. Charles, Illinois, a small village west of Chicago, the family experienced terrible misfortune. Harry’s father, Levi Goodrich, died in 1839, leaving his widow, Hortense Barnum Goodrich, nearly destitute. Harry and his younger brother, Herman B. Goodrich, became orphans when Hortense passed away the following year. The Goodrich brothers had extremely difficult childhoods. Living with separate families, the boys rarely saw one another. Harry was treated harshly and received little schooling.
Despite his lack of a formal education, young Harry was quite bright and showed a strong aptitude for mechanics. Known to carry a jackknife wherever he went so that he could whittle, Harry loved making models. As noted in a Goodrich Family genealogy, at the age of eighteen, Harry Goodrich made a new type of shingle that received first prize in the First Annual Exhibition of the Metropolitan Mechanics’ Institute of 1853. He soon got a job with the American Car Works while also focusing on his own inventions. He worked as a carpenter when he needed to make ends meet.
Herman and Harry Goodrich, ca. 1860. D.T. Lawrence, photographer, Houghton Library, Harvard University, #W163151_URN-3:FHCL.HOUGH:90603
Cover of “Love, I Love Thee,” copyrighted and published by H.C. Goodrich, 1885.
In 1855, Harry married Louisa M. Fowler, the widow of a blacksmith and mother of a young daughter named Emma. The couple went on to have an enormous family together. Harry Goodrich had his first major mechanical success in the mid-1860s when he invented a sewing machine attachment known as a tuckmarker. According to historian Claire Sherwell, while there were other tuckmarkers on the market, Goodrich’s device made clothing tucks much “quicker, easier, and affordable for everyone.” Tucks and pleats were extremely popular in American clothing at that time. Harry and Herman Goodrich began manufacturing sewing machine attachments together. The brothers became quite wealthy, but the two only remained in business together for a short period.
Left: H. C. Goodrich’s patent illustration, Tuck Marker for Sewing Machines, 1867. Right: The Goodrich Tuck Marker and original box.
Left: Petticoat, American, 1850–60. Right: Detail showing a band of diagonal tucks above a row of horizontal tucks. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Mrs. Charles Iseley, 1964.
Tucks were extremely popular in Victorian era women’s clothing. Left: This ca. 1868 photograph shows Harriet Tubman wearing a blouse with numerous tucks. Library of Congress. Right: In this colored fashion plate of the dominant women’s magazine at the time, horizontal tucks adorn the collar and skirt of left figure (in violet), while the right figure (in pink) has vertical tucks on the front bodice (a common location) and corresponding vertical tucks in the draped skirt. Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine, Vol. CI. (July-December) 1880.
By the mid-1870s, the Goodrich family was enjoying a lavish lifestyle. They owned a fine ten-room house on fashionable Washington Boulevard, west of Union Park in Chicago. A horse racing enthusiast, Harry Goodrich had his own racehorses, including the prize-winning trotter Bodine. Goodrich served as president and chairman of the Central Park Driving Association, a club with a racetrack near Garfield Park.
At the time, Harry Goodrich founded the Chicago Screw Company. He was likely the inventor of the Chicago screw— a two-piece fastener that was used for horse saddles and bookbinding and is still in use today for a wide assortment of products. (This device is commonly known as the “sex screw”.) For this endeavor, Goodrich formed a partnership with fellow inventor Charles E. Roberts (1843- 1934), who would serve as president and director of the Chicago Screw Company. The firm continued and is currently known as Stanadyne, Inc.
Harry Goodrich went on to create scores of other inventions. These included many other sewing machine attachments, as well as dozens of other products ranging from noiseless school slates, bicycles, a safety elevator, a gas lighter, and soles for boots that were “guaranteed to outwear any other sole.”
Harry seems to have possessed a greater level of creativity than business acumen. However, by the late 1880s, it appears that he was struggling financially. The Chicago Tribune described his failure as “dry rot in the business.”
Letterhead, H. C. Goodrich, “sole proprietor of the Goodrich Tuck Marker, Manufacturer & Dealer in all Standard Sewing Machine Attachments, Needles, & Findings”, 1816.
Left: Portrait of Goodrich’s Bodine, Famous Horses of America, 1877. Right: Print depicting Bodine’s most historic moment in 1875.
The noiseless slate was Goodrich’s answer to the constant clatter created by students as they worked at their desks on their wood-framed individual slates. Goodrich’s noiseless slates were used throughout the country for decades. Left: single slate. Right: Double slate.
“Noiseless Slates”, The American Stationer, March 17, 1892.
Goodrich’s inventions spanned a wide variety of industries. In 1878 he applied for a patent on a boot sole that would be durable and prevent slipping. Patent, Improvements for boots and shoes, June 4, 1879.
Lower panel: H. C. Goodrich Classified ad, “Buy No Boots or Shoes” Scientific American, July 3, 1880.
Harry and Louisa Goodrich decided to move to Oak Park in the 1890s. By that time, they had just one daughter living at home, Fannie Myrtle, who was in her early twenties. Perhaps Harry’s friend and colleague, Charles E. Roberts, a longtime Oak Park resident, convinced them to move to the bucolic suburb. Roberts was an important supporter of Frank Lloyd Wright, who was then an up-and-coming young architect. In the mid-1890s, Roberts commissioned Wright to design a block of houses that he planned to build as a speculative investment project in Oak Park. Although Roberts did not move forward with the first project, he and Wright returned to working on plans for a speculative neighborhood seven years later.
Wright recycled his 1896 plans for C.E. Roberts to build a residence for Harry and Louisa Goodrich. The couple and their youngest daughter moved into their new Oak Park house at 634 N. East Avenue in 1896. (A few years later, Oak Park renumbered this house to 534 N. East Ave.)
By the time Harry and Louisa Goodrich had moved into their new home, their daughter Adelaide Eunice was a nationally-renowned performer with her own touring company. Her husband, William Pottle, served as business manager, and their daughter, Theodora, or “Baby Pottle,” often performed with her. The Pottles lived in the Goodrich house when they weren’t touring.
Advertisement for (Adelaide) Eunice Goodrich of the Goodrich Co.
Advertisement for Theodora and (Adelaide) Eunice Goodrich of the Eunice Goodrich Co.
Louisa M. Goodrich died at home in March of 1901. For months, Harry struggled. About a year later, he married a widow, Louise Gibbs De Forrest. By this time, his various business ventures were in deep trouble. In his September 1902 wedding annoucement in an Oak Park newspaper, he was described as having “been for many years with the Wheeler & Wilson Sewing Machine company." However, it is unlikely that he had maintained a business relationship with the company. The announcement also gives his age as 61 when he was actually 70 at the time.
Obituary for Louisa M. Goodrich, Oak Park Vindicator, March 15, 1901.
Marriage announcement, DeForrest-Goodrich. Oak Leaves, September 19, 1902.
Left: Lucinda B. Chandler. Courtesy of Wikicommons. Right: Only slightly more is known about his second wife Louise than his first wife, Louisa. Louise hosted well-known suffragist Lucinda B. Chandler after her marriage in their Oak Park home. Oak Leaves, February 12, 1904.
In 1906, the Oak Leaves newspaper published an article explaining that Harry Goodrich hoped to “retrieve his withered fortune” by developing a new invention for a “ladies’ hair drier” made of a “cylindrical shaped cloth with an alcohol lamp attachment.” This risky-sounding device did not revive his fortune.
Oak Leaves cover with a portrait of H. C. Goodrich, November 17, 1906.
After a brief period of foreclosure action, the Goodriches sold the Oak Park house to a new family, the Holdens. Eleven years later, the Chicago Tribune provided an update on Harry Goodrich, who had been forced to to accept a job at the H.G. Saal company where he earned only $4 a day. The article notes that the “one time millionaire” reunited with his granddaughter Lourie, an employee of the same company.
Having never recovered his fortune, in 1926 Harry C. Goodrich died at the age of 94 in Chicago.
Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1919.
Death notice, Chicago Tribune, August 2, 1926.