Guide to the Photographs of the Frank Family, 1846-2000
- Repository
- Heinz History Center
- Title
- Photographs of the Frank Family
- Creator
- Frank family
- Collection Number
- MSP#474
- Extent
- 1 linear feet (2 boxes)
- Date
- 1850-1997
- Abstract
- William and Pauline Wormser Frank were among the first few Jewish families to make their permanent home in Pittsburgh. They were founders of the earliest institutions in the Pittsburgh Jewish community. This collection contains photographs of several generations of the Frank family as well as photographs of relatives in the Kingsbacher, Klee, and Sunstein families.
- Language
- The material in this collection is in English.
- Publisher
- Heinz History Center
- Address
- 1212 Smallman St.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222
library@heinzhistorycenter.org
URL: https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org
History
William and Pauline Wormser Frank were among the first few Jewish families to make their permanent home in Pittsburgh. They were founders of the earliest institutions in the Pittsburgh Jewish community. William was the owner of a glass factory, and their descendants have been prominent in Pittsburgh's engineering and steel-related industries as well as in Jewish religious and philanthropic activities.
William Frank was born in Bavaria and worked as a journeyman cotton weaver in various German cities before emigrating to the United States in 1840. Working first as a peddler in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, he later operated dry goods stores in Ohio before moving to Pittsburgh in 1846. William married Pauline Wormser, also an immigrant from Germany, in 1843. Their infant son Ephraim was one of the first people buried in the Jewish cemetery in the Troy Hill neighborhood, in the burial ground owned by the Bes Almon Burial Association, the first Jewish institution in Western Pennsylvania. The Franks were among the founders of Rodef Shalom Congregation, the oldest surviving synagogue in Pittsburgh. When Rodef Shalom dedicated its first permanent building in 1862, William Frank was president of the congregation. William Frank was also a founder of the Hebrew Benevolent Society. Pauline Frank was a founder of the Jewish Ladies' Relief Association, which was active in the Sanitary Commission fairs to aid Civil War soldiers; she also served for many years on the board of the Pittsburgh Association for the Improvement of the Poor.
The Frank family lived first above their store and at two other locations in downtown Pittsburgh, and then moved to Mount Washington in 1865 and Allegheny City in 1884. Their son Isaac W. Frank, along with many other members of the Jewish community, made his home in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood after the turn of the twentieth century.
William Frank and his brother-in-law Ephraim Wormser were partners, first in the dry goods business and subsequently in the manufacture of glass, which became one of Pittsburgh's major industries. Their glass factory was built in the 1850s, and the family business was run under the names Frank & Wormser and Wm. Frank & Sons until 1876, when the factory burned down and was not rebuilt. The company's principal products were bottles and flasks used for pharmaceuticals, liquor, and food products. The museum collection of the Senator John Heinz History Center contains several specimens of Frank bottles.
Isaac W. Frank, one of William and Pauline Frank's sons, was born in 1855 and educated in Pittsburgh schools and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he received his civil engineering degree in 1876. After holding engineering positions in New York, Mississippi, Colorado, and Pittsburgh, Isaac W. Frank became involved in the manufacture of rolling mill and steel works machinery through his position as Secretary and Engineer at the Lewis Foundry and Machine Company in Pittsburgh. In 1892, he organized the Frank-Kneeland Machine Company, and later the United Engineering and Foundry Company, of which he was president until 1919. In 1915, before the United States entered World War I, Isaac W. Frank took the unusual position of refusing to manufacture arms or ammunition for nations at war.
In the course of his professional life, Isaac W. Frank served on the boards of many steel companies and related industries; he was also a trustee of the University of Pittsburgh and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as well as serving on the boards of most of the Jewish philanthropies in Pittsburgh. Isaac W. Frank was married in 1883 to Tinnie Klee, daughter of Jacob and Lena (Hirsch) Klee, who were also founding members of Rodef Shalom Congregation and other Jewish institutions in Pittsburgh. Isaac W. Frank died in 1930.
William K. Frank, one of three children of Isaac W. and Tinnie K. Frank, was born in 1890 and was educated in Pittsburgh public schools, Shady Side Academy, and Cornell University, where he received his mechanical engineering degree in 1911. He worked for Damascus Bronze Company, a manufacturer of industrial, railroad, and rolling mill bearings, and its successor the National Bearing Division of the American Brake Shoe Co., until 1927. William K. Frank joined Copperweld Steel Company in 1927; he worked in various executive capacities there and served as member and chairman of the board, retiring in 1951. Copperweld produced alloy steels and copper-covered steel rods and wire. William K. Frank was also a director of United Engineering and Foundry Company (which had been founded by his father Isaac) and of the Apollo Steel Company.
William K. Frank was also active in the ownership and management of commercial properties, including the Webster Hall, Ruskin Apartments, and Amalgamated Realty Company, and in two car dealerships, Midtown Motors and Central Lincoln Mercury, Inc. During World War II, he served the War Production Board in several capacities, including director of the General Industrial Equipment Division, director of the Equipment Bureau, and special assistant to the director of the War Production Board. His service, as a "dollar-a-year-man," took him to Europe to study ways to bring war-torn plants back into full production.
Like other members of his family, William K. Frank was involved with many philanthropic organizations in the Jewish community and the wider community of Pittsburgh. He served on the boards of the Association for the Improvement of the Poor, the Young Men's and Women's Hebrew Association, the Emma Farm Association, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, and the Community Chest of Allegheny County.
William K. Frank was married to Florence Kingsbacher from 1914 until her death in 1940; they had three children. Florence K. Frank was one of the founders of the Community School, which later became the Falk School at the University of Pittsburgh. After World War II, William K. Frank moved to New York, and he lived in Montauk, Long Island after his retirement. He had one child with his second wife, Mary Knabenshue. He died in New York in 1964.
James Alan Frank, the second child of William K. and Florence K. Frank, was born in 1918. Like his father, he was graduated from Shady Side Academy and Cornell University, and he worked in the family businesses Copperweld Steel and Amalgamated Realty. During World War II, James A. Frank served as a major in the Army Air Forces. In 1942 he married Ruth Ohringer, the daughter of Abraham and Helen (Stern) Ohringer. Abraham (Abe) Ohringer, who was 87 years old when he died in 1975, was the founder, with his wife, of Ohringer Home Furniture Company in Braddock, PA. Helen Ohringer (1881-1983) was a founding member of Ein Karem Chapter of Hadassah. Both Ohringers were noted philanthropists in the Jewish community. James and Ruth Frank had four children.
In the 1950s, James A. Frank started his own company, American Air Surveys, which made aerial topographical maps for businesses; later he worked as a business consultant. He continued the family tradition of community service, chairing the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Jewish Committee and serving on the boards of the Pittsburgh YMCA, Urban League, and United Way. Because of his interest in his own family history and the early history of the Jewish community in Pittsburgh, he became one of the founders of what is now the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Scope and Content Notes
The Photographs of the Frank Family are housed in two archival boxes and are arranged by subject and placed in roughly chronological order within each folder. There are photographs of several generations of the Frank family as well as photographs of relatives in the Kingsbacher, Klee, and Sunstein families. Included are photographs documenting James A. Frank's research into the Pittsburgh-area homes of the Frank family. Of note are nine early twentieth-century stereoscopic photographs of the exterior and interior of the Isaac W. Frank home on Irwin Street (now 5601 Aylesboro Ave.) in Squirrel Hill; some of these are identified on the reverse as the work of Philip Brigandi, a photographer who had a studio in Pittsburgh and later worked for the Keystone View Company in California.
The Photographs of the Frank Family include documentation of bottles manufactured by William Frank & Sons glass factory in the second half of the nineteenth century. Other businesses related to the Frank family, including Frank-Kneeland machine Co., Midtown Motors, and Medrad, are also represented. There are photographs of the members of the Frank family whose activities were represented in two community exhibits about Jewish history in Western Pennsylvania. There is also one photograph of the painting "Mrs. O'Doud's Grocery Store, by Jasper Holman Lawman, shown as it was hung in the home of William K. Frank.
Additions in 2013 from the papers of Helen and Abraham (Abe) Ohringer include a Sunstein family reunion group photograph and photographs of Jewish organizations such as State of Israel Bonds, Ladies Hospital Aid Society, American Jewish Committee, and the American Technion Society. Also included are photographs of James A. Frank during his military service in World War II.
Conditions Governing Access
No Restrictions.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
These materials came in two accessions and were combined into one body in 2008.
Acc#2006.0219 and Acc#2007.0262. Gifts of Ruth O. Frank, widow of James A. Frank., additions in 2013 are from Acc#1991.0145, gift of James A. Frank, and Acc#2009.0197, gift of Ruth O. Frank.
Preferred Citation
Photographs of the Frank Family, 1846-2000, MSP#474, Rauh Jewish Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center
Processing Information
This collection was processed by Martha L. Berg on July 7, 2008, with additions and revisions by Martha L. Berg on July 22, 2013 .
Conditions Governing Use
Property rights reside with the Senator John Heinz History Center. Literary rights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to reproduce or publish, please contact the Library and Archives of the Senator John Heinz History Center.
Related Materials
The Rodef Shalom Congregation Archives (http://rodefshalom.org/who/history/) contains records relating to the Frank family, and its art collection includes oil portraits of William and Pauline Frank. The American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio (www.huc.edu/aja) has a small amount of material on the Frank family.
Separated Materials
One corrugated enclosure containing oversize materials has been separated and described as MSO#474.
One folder of oral history cassette tapes has been separated and described as MFC#474.
The following books and publications have been separately catalogued in the Library:
A Pittsburgh Album, Revised for Bicentennial, compiled, written & edited by Roy Stryker and Mel Seidenberg (1959 & 1975, Pittsburgh Post- Gazette), pages loose.
"The Founding of Columbian Council," by Ida Cohen Selavan, reprinted from American Jewish Archives, vol. 30, no. 1, April 1978.
"Story of Religion in the Pittsburgh Area," compiled and written by O.M. Walton, for the Bicentennial of the city of Pittsburgh, 1958.
"Jews Connected with the History of Pittsburgh 1749-1865," Master's Thesis by Julia Miller, University of Pittsburgh, 1930.
"The Early Migration and Settlement of Jews in Pittsburgh 1754-1894," by Jacob S. Feldman, UJF, 1959.
"United Engineering and Foundry Company," by G. G. Beard, American Newcomen Society in North America, 1961.
"United for Fifty Years," by John E. Pfeiffer, United Engineering and Foundry Company, 1951.
"United Effort," published by the employees of United Engineering & Foundry Company, July, 1926, vol. 6, no. 7.
"The Pioneers of a Community: Regional Diversity Among the Jews of Pittsburgh, 1845-1861," By Jacob S. Feldman, reprint from American Jewish Archives, vol. 32, no. 2, Nov. 1980.
Post card of Schenley Hotel, © 1910, J.C. Bradgon, Pittsburg/ Fort Pitt Publishing Co.
Three items have been separately catalogued in the Museum Division.
Subjects
- Wm. Frank & Sons (Pittsburgh, PA)
- Lewis Foundry Machine Co. (Pittsburgh, PA)
- Frank-Kneeland Machine Co. (Pittsburgh, PA)
- Midtown Motors (Pittsburgh, PA)
- State of Israel Bonds (Pittsburgh, PA)
- Ladies Hospital Aid Society (Pittsburgh, PA)
- American Jewish Committee (Pittsburgh, PA)
- American Technion Society (Pittsburgh, PA)
- Copperweld Steel Co. (Pittsburgh, PA)
- United Engineering and Foundry Company (Pittsburgh, Pa.)
- War Production Board (Washington, DC)
- Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania--Rauh Jewish Archives (Pittsburgh, PA)
- Frank family
- Klee family
- Sunstein family
- Frank, William, 1819-1891
- Frank, Pauline Wormser, 1815-1910
- Frank, Isaac W., 1855-1930
- Frank, William K., 1890-1964
- Kingsbacher, Morris, 1847-1930
- Ohringer, Abraham, 1888-1975
- Ohringer, Helen, 1881-1983
- Frank, James A., 1918-2004
- Lawman, Jasper Holman
- Eisenhower, Dwight D., 1890-1969
- Brigandi, Philip
- Krause, Corinne
- Glass manufacture--Pittsburgh, PA
- Glass factories--Pittsburgh, PA
- Engineering--Pittsburgh, PA
- Rolling-mill machinery--Pittsburgh, PA
- Philanthropy--Pittsburgh, PA
- Jewish soldiers--Pittsburgh, PA
- World War, 1939-1945
- Stereoscopic photography--Pittsburgh, PA
- Photographers--Pittsburgh, PA
- Jews--Pittsburgh, PA