John J. Emery
Created Downtown Cincinnati’s Signature Building
-The Carew Tower
Peterloon Was The Estate He Created For His Wife And Family.
John J. Emery may be best known as the principal developer of downtown Cincinnati, helping to revitalize the city following the Great Depression. Emery’s real estate company developed the Carew Tower, at the time the tallest building west of the Alleghenies. He also built the Terrace Plaza hotel in the modern style and had original art work commissioned for the building by Joan Miro, Saul Steinberg, and Alexander Calder.
Emery was a founder of the Cincinnati Country Day School, a leading trustee and important benefactor of the Cincinnati Art Museum, and served as vice-president of the Boy Scouts. In fact, Emery hosted so many Scouting Jamborees that they came to be called ‘Peterloons’.
Charles Dana Gibson
Charles Dana Gibson Created The Gibson Girl, An Iconic Representation Of The American Woman At The Turn Of The 20th Century.
Irene Gibson Emery, John Emery’s wife, was the daughter of celebrated illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. He often visited his daughter and son-in-law at Peterloon.
The Gibson Girl was the personification of a feminine ideal as portrayed in the pen and ink illustrated stories created by Charles Dana Gibson during a twenty year period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States.
Gibson’s Illustrations appeared in all major New York publications: Harper’s Weekly, Scribners, and Colliers Magazine to name a few.
The inspiration for the Gibson Girl was Gibson’s own wife Irene Langhorne. Irene and her sister Nancy Langhorne Astor—who became the first woman to serve as a member of Parliament in the British House of Commons—served as early models for Gibson and personified the feminine ideal of the time.
