Lily Moulton Doane Wicks

Care, music and a place for art

1865–1937

Lily Moulton Doane Wicks spent fifteen years presiding over a hospital board in Syracuse, in central New York. During her long association with the institution, it grew from a hospital for women and children into a general hospital in a substantial new building. Alongside that work, she helped sustain the city's music and art, supporting institutions that continue to serve Syracuse.[1–3]

An earlier image of Lily survives in a very different setting. Theodore E. Pine's Doane Family Portrait, painted in 1871, gathers the children of John Wesley Doane in an elaborate outdoor scene. Lily is the girl at the far left, wearing blue beside the carriage. Many years later, her son Bartlett gave the painting to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City, Utah.[4]

Lily was born in 1865, a daughter of John Wesley Doane and Julia Ann Moulton. Her family had connections with Chicago and with Thompson, in northeastern Connecticut. She married Frederick Stanton Wicks at Trinity Church in Chicago on April 24, 1889. Frederick, who turned thirty-eight the following day, had already established his legal practice in Syracuse, in central New York.[1,5]

Their first anniversary came immediately after a loss. Stanton Doane Wicks was born in Syracuse on April 21, 1890, and died two days later. Their next son, born in Chicago on January 4, 1892, received the same name. Bartlett was also born in Chicago, on April 16, 1895; John Doane, later known as Jack, followed on July 8, 1896. Four sons were born to the marriage, and three survived infancy. The Chicago births reflect the family's continuing ties to the city.[5]

Her hospital service began while the boys were young. In 1897 she joined the board of the institution that later became Syracuse Memorial Hospital. It had been founded by women to provide care for women and children, with a training school for nurses. Its trustees were women, responsible for sustaining an institution whose patients, buildings and services grew over time.[2,3]

By 1918 the hospital's name reflected its broader work as a general hospital. A community campaign supported a new building on Irving Avenue, near Syracuse University, which opened in 1929. Lily's obituary credited her with a leading part in its construction and placed the completion during her presidency.[1,3]

The Harmony Circle, another of her recorded associations, supported the hospital through fundraising and provision for patients. Her interests also included St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Meade Settlement, the Huntington Club and the Perpetual Nurse Fund. These connections placed her among the women supporting Syracuse's charitable institutions.[1,3]

Music and visual art occupied a substantial place in her public life. She was an organizer and patron of a Syracuse symphony orchestra and helped the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts develop. Frederick had been one of the museum's original trustees, but Lily's own patronage is separately documented. In 1931 she purchased Robert Strong Woodward's Across the Pond and gave it to the museum. The pastel shows water, trees and a small boat near Mount Hermon Station in Northfield, Massachusetts. Its museum label credits Mrs. Frederick Wicks as donor.[2,6,7]

The gift survives within the collection of the Everson Museum of Art, the later name of the Syracuse institution. It provides a specific example of her patronage: a work she helped bring into a public collection, preserved beyond her lifetime. The museum's 1916 gallery photographs also show the kind of institution she supported—rooms of paintings beneath skylights, with chairs set out for visitors.[6,7]

Family life included a summer home on Chenango Street in Cazenovia, a village southeast of Syracuse in Madison County, New York. Early in 1900 Lily, Frederick and their family had also traveled as guests on an extended tour of California and the Northwest.[5,8] The family's Doane genealogy account records First World War service by all three surviving sons.[11] By Frederick's final years their Syracuse home was on Brattle Road. He retired in 1929 and died there on April 26, 1931, two days after their forty-second wedding anniversary.[5,8]

Lily survived him by six years. Their son Stanton died in February 1937; she herself became ill that spring and entered Syracuse Memorial Hospital. She died there on May 4, 1937, aged seventy-one. Funeral arrangements awaited Bartlett's arrival from Salt Lake City. Bartlett and John survived her, and she was buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse.[1,2,9]

Her later years brought her back, as a patient, to the institution she had helped govern. The hospital subsequently became part of today's Crouse Hospital, while the museum she supported developed into the Everson. Lily's contribution is more specific: years of hospital governance, support for music, and a work of art that still carries the record of her gift.[3,6,10]