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Dealer: Scripophily
Contact:
Bob Kerstein
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Shipping inside United States:
$4.25
Shipping outside United States:
$9.25
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Description:
Beautifully engraved SPECIMEN certificate from the Hub, Henry C. Lytton & Company. This historic document was printed by the Columbian Banknote Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company logo between an allegorical man and woman. This item has the printed signatures of the Company’s President ( Henry C. Lytton ) and its Secretary.
Certificate Vignette When he opened his State Street store in 1887, Henry C. Lytton called his store "The Hub." Starting 20 years earlier as a retail merchant in Ionia, Michigan, Lytton invested $12,000 in his Chicago operation, spending over one third of that on advertising. Soon he ran a successful retail establishment that prided itself as being "The Leading Clothiers, Furnishers and Hatters of Chicago." The store's 1892 catalogue featured "The best goods at the lowest prices," offering long and stylish capes for $5 to $20. In 1913, he hired one of Chicago's most prestigious architects, Benjamin Marshall, to design a new 19-story State Street store. Marshall later built the Drake and Edgewater Beach Hotels, numerous country houses, and set the standard for luxury apartment buildings. HENRY CHARLES LYTTON is one of Chicago's great merchant princes. He was the founder of one of the city's great commercial institutions, "The Hub," and through that and from it he has projected his influence into civic betterment and philanthropy far beyond the bounds of his home city. Henry Charles Lytton was born at New York City July 13, 1846, and was of English parentage. His father was a shirt manufacturer. Mr. Lytton attended public schools until he was fourteen and then spent a year in the College of the City of New York. The achievements of his mature career reflects not so much the training of school as the deep inward urge and drive that has been an unalterable part of his character endowment. He found his direction, his purpose, his goal almost intuitively when a boy and all his experiences were steps toward one high objective. While he was an errand boy getting fifty cents a week, he walked from his home in Bleecker Street to his place of employment in Nassau Street, taking his lunch with him and saving the larger part of his salary. The saving of itself was unimportant, but the habit of thrift thus manifested was very important. At the age of seventeen he was entry clerk in a wholesale dry goods house at a salary of eight dollars a week. A year later he went to Saint Louis, and for three years was bookkeeper in a large retail clothing house in that city. During one vacation after a visit back to New York he returned to Saint Louis late Sunday, finding all the ferries blocked by floating ice. In order that he might be able to report to the business at the regular time on Monday morning, he performed the perilous feat of crossing the river on the floating blocks of ice. About 1867, Mr. Lytton and his brother combined their capital, amounting to about $3,000, and established a business at Ionia Michigan. Later they started a branch store in Grand Rapids. Mr. Lytton was in business in Grand Rapids for about fifteen years. His business failed in 1876, following the hard times after the panic of 1873. Settlements had to be made with his creditors on the basis of thirty-three and a third cents on the dollar. Though his legal obligations were discharged, Mr. Lytton assured his creditors that in time the obligations would be fully settled, and every dollar of the moral debt was paid back in subsequent years. In 1884 Mr. Lytton took over a bankrupt business in Indianapolis, but in 1887 changed his location to Chicago, where he founded the Hub Clothing Store. From the beginning the Hub was a store with a character of its own and thousands of the older generation of Middle West citizens remember its business policies and dependable merchandise when there was nothing distinctive about the building it oc cupied at the northwest corner of State and Jackson. The Hub was a great clothing store in those days, had a splendid organization of personnel, and from the first the solid qual ities of the business were reinforced by unique and original advertising. Henry C. Lytton was always a liberal patron of newspaper and other advertising, and publicity was one of the means by which he created and built up a great institution. His sons came into the business with him, and the owners of the Hub have always been known as Henry C. Lytton & Sons. Mr. Henry C. Lytton was still active in the business when in 1912 the store was moved across the street to the great new Lytton Building, which after twenty years stands as the most notable of the loop edifices. Henry C. Lytton married September 13, 1871, at Winnsboro, North Carolina, Rose Wolfe. She died in 1916, the mother of five children. The son Charles died in 1879 and Beaumont in 1914. The two surviving sons are George, vice president of Henry C. Lytton & Sons, and Walter, who gives most of his time to real estate activities. The daughter, Gertrude, is the wife of the famous portrait painter, August Benziger. In 1918 Mr. Henry C. Lytton married Miss Carlotta D. Doty, whose father at one time was director of the Port of New York. Mr. Lytton for many years had a home on what was then the fashionable Prairie Ave. flue. He has a summer home on Long Island, and another in France at Camp D'Ail, three miles from Monte Carlo. Though eighty-five years of age he often plays eighteen holes of golf in a day, and much of his time in later years has been given to travel. But his chief hobby and source of in spiration through the years has been music. As a young man he had an unusual tenor voice and while living in Indianapolis sang in President Harrison's church and was one of the leaders in the Maennerchor and appeared as a local soloist with the late Lizzie Lehmann (at that time Germany's greatest dramatic soprano) in a notable perfor
| Status: Sold |
Reference#: hubhenclytco |
| Condition:
See Description |
Year:
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