John Wesley Doane

Rebuilding a place in Chicago

In February 1872, only months after the Great Chicago Fire, John Wesley Doane secured a long lease on ground at Lake Street and Wabash Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, on Lake Michigan. The location had held the Burch Block. He commissioned a five-storey building for wholesale grocers and related businesses, with elevators, steam heat and substantial storage space. A contemporary account described 150 men at work on it and a projected cost of $175,000.

This was a rebuilding project by a merchant who had himself been burned out. Doane had arrived in Chicago at twenty-two and opened a small grocery store. Born in Thompson, Connecticut, on March 23, 1833, he was a son of Joel Doane and Olivia Primrose Hascall. He married Julia Ann Moulton, and their family included Lily Moulton Doane. By 1870 his grocery concern had grown into a major regional business. The fire of 1871 destroyed it.

The following year’s Grocers’ Block makes the recovery tangible. Doane engaged architect T. V. Wadskier and planned a building 115 feet along Lake Street and 170 feet along Wabash Avenue. Its lower frontage was to combine iron and plate glass; the upper floors used pressed brick. J. W. Doane & Co. would occupy the southern store, while other firms leased space for groceries, crockery, lamps and glassware. Contemporary promotional reporting credited the development with drawing trade back toward Lake Street. Whatever allowance is made for that enthusiasm, the scale and tenants show that Doane was rebuilding both commercial premises and a network of businesses.

His career changed after the fire. The re-established grocery concern passed to other owners in 1872, while he continued in importing. A Chicago directory for 1874 lists J. W. Doane & Co. as importers of teas and coffees at 41 and 43 Wabash Avenue. Later accounts describe a business with offices extending beyond Chicago to New York, London, England, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The family genealogy attributes his restart to borrowed capital; the contemporary building account independently documents how quickly he committed himself to substantial new premises.

Doane’s later positions joined commerce to finance and rail transport. He became president of Merchants’ Loan & Trust and a director of the Pullman Palace Car Company, Illinois Central Railroad and Allen Paper Car Wheel Company. These were named corporate responsibilities, not merely social connections. His place among the guarantors of the five-million-dollar subscription for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition also put him behind one of Chicago’s largest civic undertakings. The sum was a collective guarantee by Chicago citizens, not his personal donation.

Although his business interests spread widely, he retained ties to Thompson. The newspaper accounts preserved with his memorial describe a summer home there and a funeral attended by people from Chicago, New York, Boston and surrounding Connecticut towns. Men from his workforce served as bearers. He had died at the Holland House in New York on March 23, 1901, his sixty-eighth birthday; his burial returned him to the family lot at West Thompson.

Their daughter’s fuller name is Lily Moulton Doane Wicks.