Herbert L. Pratt

Herbert Lee Pratt (21 November 1871 - 3 February 1945) was an American business man and a leading figure in the United States oil industry.

Early life

Pratt was born 21 November, 1871 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Standard Oil industrialist Charles Pratt. He took a degree of Bachelor of Arts at Amherst College in 1895.

He was brother to Frederic B. Pratt, George Dupont Pratt, John Teele Pratt and Harold I. Pratt; and half-brother to Charles Millard Pratt.

Career

Like his father before him, Pratt was a leading figure in the US oil industry, and head of Standard Oil Company of New York, from 1923. This company eventually became Mobil.

Pratt was on the front cover of "Time" on 11 June, 1923, when he replaced Henry Clay Folger as head of Standard Oil Company of New York.

Pratt was also a director of Bankers Trust Company from 1917-38, and Asia Banking Corporation.

Pratt was the author of several monographs on Shakespeare and was reputed to own the finest Shakespeare library in the US.

Heritage and philanthropy

His family estate, "The Braes", Glen Cove, Long Island is now the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture. It was built in 1912-1914, the largest of the Pratt mansions at Glen Cove, and designed by James Brite in the neo-Jacobean style.

In 1910, he bought the 9,000 acre Good Hope plantation and hunting lodge in South Carolina (about five miles from Ridgeland) from Harry B. Hollins, also of Long Island.

Pratt was an art collector, particularly portraits and miniatures. When Rotherwas Court, Herefordshire, was dismantled and auctioned in 1913, Pratt purchased the dining room for his neo-Jacobean mansion "The Braes," then under construction. His bequest to Amherst College included the Rotherwas Room and over eighty American portraits and miniatures, as well as an extensive collection of decorative arts. Rotherwas Room was incorporated into the Mead Art Museum when it was built at Amherst College in 1949.

Personal life

On 28 April 1897, Pratt married Florence Gibb (daughter of John Gibb), and they had five children:
* Edith G Pratt
* Herbert Lee Pratt Jr (1900-
* Harriet B Pratt, who married Lawrence B. Van Ingen of Manhattan in 1923
* Florence G Pratt
* Frederic Richardson Pratt (1907 - 1966)

He died in New York on 3 February, 1945, aged 73.

External links

* cite news
author=
title=The Standard Oil
date=1923-06-11
work=Time Magazine
url=http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,736145,00.html
accessdate=2008-08-10 Time magazine story