Edward William Bok (born Eduard Willem Gerard Cesar Hidde Bok) (October 9, 1863 – January 9, 1930) By the time Bok was in his early teens, he was required to quit school to aid his family with financial support. His first full-time job, in 1876, was as an office boy with the Western Union Telegraph company.
In 1882, Bok began work with Henry Holt and Company as a stenographer while also taking classes in the evenings. In 1884, he accepted an offer from Charles Scribner's Sons to became its advertising manager. From 1884 until 1887, Bok was the editor of The Brooklyn Magazine, and in 1886, he founded the Bok Syndicate Press, "the country's third syndicate with 137 newspapers subscribed".
In 1896, Bok married Mary L. Curtis, the daughter of Louisa and Cyrus Curtis. She shared her family's interest in music, cultural activities, and philanthropy and was very active in social circles. Shortly before his marriage, he published an advice book for young men. He noted among other things, that "A man who truly loves his mother, wife, sister or sweetheart never tells a story which lowers her sex in the eyes of others." During his editorship, the Journal became the first magazine in the world to have one million subscribers and it became very influential among readers by featuring informative and progressive ideas in its articles.</blockquote>
The Journal also became the first magazine to refuse patent medicine advertisements.
In 1919, Bok retired from publishing.
thumb|Original caption from his 1922 autobiography: "Where Edward Bok is happiest: in his garden". Date and place are uncertain.
In 1924, Mary Louise Bok founded the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which she dedicated to her father, Cyrus Curtis, and in 1927, the Boks embarked upon the construction of Bok Tower Gardens, near their winter home in Mountain Lake Estates, Lake Wales, Florida, which was dedicated on February 1, 1929, by the president of the United States, Calvin Coolidge. Bok Tower is sometimes called a sanctuary and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark. Bok is used as an example in Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Bok died after a heart attack on January 9, 1930, in Lake Wales, within sight of his beloved Singing Tower and was buried at the tower's base. Two of his grandsons are folk singer Gordon Bok and former Harvard University President Derek Bok.
Edward Bok and American domestic architecture
thumb|Edward Bok with dogs
In 1895, Bok began publishing in Ladies' Home Journal plans for building houses which were affordable for the American middle class – from $1,500 to $5,000 – and made full specifications with regional prices available by mail for $5. Later, Bok and the Journal became a major force in promoting the "bungalow", a style of residence which derived from India. Plans for these houses cost as little as a dollar, and the -story dwelling, some as small as 800 square feet, soon became a dominant form of new domestic architecture in the country.
Bok's overall concern was to preserve his socially conservative vision of the ideal American household, with the wife as homemaker and child-rearer, and the children raised in a healthy, natural setting, close to the soil. To this end, he promoted the suburbs as the best place for well-balanced domestic life.
Theodore Roosevelt said about Bok:<blockquote>[He] is the only man I ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architecture of an entire nation, and he did it so quickly and effectively that we didn't know it was begun before it was finished. One of his first commentaries on the issue clearly stated
that "women were not yet ready for the vote". The Journals wide reach among American middle-class women made Bok a key ally of the anti-suffrage movement. On the other hand, the magazine was an advocate of causes such as "conservation, public health, birth control, sanitation, and educational reform".
Awards and honors
Bok's 1920 autobiography The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After
The Edward W. Bok Technical High School in Philadelphia, opened in 1938, was named in his honor. The school closed in 2013.
Works
- Successward (1895) online
- The Young Man in Business (1895) online (Internet Archive)
- The Young Man & The Church (1896) (Google Books)
- Her Brother's Letters (1906)
- Why I Believe in Poverty (1915) online
- The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920)