Julius Rosenwald (
August 12, 1862 –
January 6, 1932) was a U.S. clothier, manufacturer, business executive, and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for the Rosenwald Fund which donated millions to support the education of African Americans, as well as other philanthropic causes in the first half of the 20th century. He was also the principal founder and backer for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago to which he gave over five million dollars and served as President from 1927 to1932.
Julius Rosenwald was born to clothier Samuel Rosenwald and his wife Augusta Hammerslough Rosenwald, a Jewish immigrant family from Germany. He was born and raised just a few blocks from the Abraham Lincoln residence in Springfield, Illinois during Lincoln's presidency of the United States.
By his sixteenth year, his parents apprenticed Rosenwald to his uncles in New York City to learn the clothing trades. While in New York he befriended Henry Goldman and Henry Morgenthau, Sr.. With his younger brother Morris, Rosenwald started a clothing manufacturing company but was ruined by a recession in 1885. Rosenwald had heard about other clothiers who had begun manufacturing clothing according to the standardized sizes that had been collected during the American Civil War. He decided to try the system but closer to the rural population that he anticipated would be his market. He and his brother moved to Chicago, Illinois.
Once in Chicago, Julius and Morris enlisted more help from a cousin, Julius Weil, and together they founded Rosenwald and Weil Clothiers.
In 1890, Rosenwald married Augusta Nusbaum, a daughter of a competing clothier. Together they had five children: Lessing J. Rosenwald, Adele Rosenwald Deutsch Levy, Edith Rosenwald Stern, Marion Rosenwald Ascoli and William Rosenwald. His son Lessing Rosenwald became a prominent businessman, following his father in the chairmanship of Sears, Roebuck & Company (1932-1939).
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