John Teele Pratt

John Teele Pratt (December 25, 1873 — June 17, 1927) was an American corporate attorney, philanthropist, music impresario, and financier.

Early life

Pratt was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 25 December 1873, the son of Standard Oil industrialist Charles Pratt and Mary Helen Richardson. He was brother to Frederic B. Pratt, George Dupont Pratt, Herbert L. Pratt, and Harold I. Pratt; and half-brother to Charles Millard Pratt.

After graduating from Amherst College in 1896, he studied at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1900.

Career

He worked as a lawyer for the prestigious firm of Carter and Ledyard at 54 Wall Street in New York.

Pratt died suddenly in his Broadway office on June 17, 1927, aged 53,^[1] of heart disease. Thirty six years earlier, his father, Charles Pratt, died of heart disease in offices at the same address.

Legacy

In 1910, Pratt and his wife had a brick neo-Georgian mansion, "The Manor", designed by architect Charles A. Platt built at their 55-acre Glen Cove estate. In 1913, it was considered by Country Life Magazine to be one of the best twelve country houses in America. It is now the Glen Cove Mansion Hotel and Conference Center.^[2]

The John Teele Pratt residence on East 61st St, New York City, also designed by Platt about 1915, still exists.^[3]

Personal life

He married Ruth Sears Baker, who in 1929, became the first woman elected to the United States Congress from the State of New York.

John Teele and Ruth Sears Baker Pratt had five children:

1. John Teele Pratt Jr;
2. Virginia Pratt (1905–1979), who married Robert H. Thayer;
3. Phyllis Pratt (1912–1987), who married Paul Henry Nitze;
4. Edwin H Baker Pratt (1913–1975), headmaster of the private Browne & Nichols, now Buckingham Browne & Nichols school; and
5. Sally Pratt

References