Charles Bunstein Stover

Parks Commissioner Charles Bunstein Stover and Bill Snyder circa 1913 at the Central Park Zoo

Charles Bunstein Stover (July 14, 1861 - April 25, 1929) was the Parks Commissioner for New York City.

Biography

He was born in Riegelsville, Pennsylvania, on July 14, 1861. He attended Lafayette College and graduated in 1881. He was trained as a Presbyterian minister at the Union Theological Seminary and graduated in 1884. He also studied briefly abroad at the University of Berlin, before moving to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.^[1]

In 1913 he told his staff and coworkers that he was going out for lunch then he disappeared for 39 days.^[1] He was erroneously thought to be dead in Delaware when a body resembling him was found.^[2] After a nationwide search he was found in the Midwest. New York City Mayor Ardolph L. Kline had Stover suspended, and he mailed in a letter of resignation from Cincinnati. On January 28, 1914, he returned to the University Settlement House. Stover spent the rest of his days developing a summer camp at Beacon, New York, operated by the University Settlement House. He died at the University Settlement House on April 25, 1929, at the age of 68.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "Charles Stover". New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=13126. Retrieved 2009-07-28. 
2. ^ "Park Commissioner's Friends Alarmed by a Report from Wilmington. But Those Who Know Mr. Stover Best Find Flaws in Description. Last Heard from in Philadelphia." (PDF). New York Times. November 15, 1913. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0DEED91E3BE633A25756C1A9679D946296D6CF. Retrieved 2009-07-28. "Friends of Park Commissioner Charles B. Stover were much alarmed last night when dispatches from Wilmington, Del., said that in a body found in the Christiana River, near the shipyard of the American Car and Foundry Company there, Coroner John T. Spring of Wilmington reported that he recognized striking resemblance to Mr. Stover, whose whereabouts have not been known for some time."