John Ames Mitchell
Encyclopedia
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
educated architect who studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The most famous is the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, now located on the left bank in Paris, across the Seine from the Louvre, in the 6th arrondissement. The school has a history spanning more than 350 years,...
in Paris, in 1883 he co-founded Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine with Andrew Miller
Andrew Miller (publisher)
Andrew Miller was an American magazine publisher and Thoroughbred racehorse owner/breeder who was a founding partner and Secretary/Treasurer of Life magazine....
. Serving as president, Mitchell held a 75 percent interest in the magazine with the remainder by Miller in his job as secretary-treasurer. Both men retained their holdings until their deaths. Much more like today's New Yorker than the Life of the later 20th century, Mitchell's magazine discovered and encouraged many fine writers and artists at the turn of the century, such as Charles Dana Gibson
Charles Dana Gibson
Charles Dana Gibson was an American graphic artist, best known for his creation of the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent American woman at the turn of the 20th century....
, the illustrator who created the Gibson Girl
Gibson Girl
The Gibson Girl was the personification of a feminine ideal as portrayed in the satirical pen-and-ink-illustrated stories created by illustrator Charles Dana Gibson during a 20-year period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States.Some people argue that the...
. It covered the literary scene as well as political and social issues. He and Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley
Horace Greeley was an American newspaper editor, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, a politician, and an outspoken opponent of slavery...
of the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
founded the Fresh Air Fund
Fresh Air Fund
The Fresh Air Fund is a not-for-profit agency that provides free summer vacations in the country to New York City children from disadvantaged communities. Each year, thousands of children visit volunteer host families in 13 states from Virginia to Maine and Canada through the Friendly Town...
, which for many years operated the Life Fresh Air camp for city kids on the site of today's Branchville School in Ridgefield, Connecticut
Ridgefield, Connecticut
Ridgefield is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. Situated in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, the 300-year-old community had a population of 24,638 at the 2010 census. The town center, which was formerly a borough, is defined by the U.S...
, the town in which Mitchell also lived.
Mitchell penned a half dozen novels, the most famous of which, Amos Judd (1895), was made into the 1922 silent film, The Young Rajah
The Young Rajah
The Young Rajah is a 1922 silent film starring Rudolph Valentino. The film was based on the book Amos Judd by John Ames Mitchell.-Plot:...
, starring Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino was an Italian actor, and early pop icon. A sex symbol of the 1920s, Valentino was known as the "Latin Lover". He starred in several well-known silent films including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and Son of the Sheik...
. Life was purchased in 1936 by another Ridgefield resident, Henry Luce
Henry Luce
Henry Robinson Luce was an influential American publisher. He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed journalism and the reading habits of upscale Americans...
, who turned it into a picture-oriented magazine. The headquarters of Mitchell's Life is now the Herald Square Hotel in New York, a gift to Mitchell from Charles Dana Gibson
Charles Dana Gibson
Charles Dana Gibson was an American graphic artist, best known for his creation of the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent American woman at the turn of the 20th century....
in appreciation of the publisher’s having seen and developed his potential as an artist.
Mitchell died in 1918 and is buried in Ridgefield Cemetery. Windover, his estate, was subdivided years ago, but the main house is still on West Lane. Its owner also operates the Herald Square Hotel, once Mitchell's Life headquarters.