Gustav H. Schwab

If ever a man in this community showed what a business man might do and be, it was Gustav H. Schwab. He started with the inestimable advantage of cultivated ancestry and parentage; he was born in a home of culture. It was here in New York, at the foot of West One Hundred and Nineteenth Street in 1851, where the Riverside Drive is now. His father [Gustav Schwab], the son of a poet and himself a well-educated German merchant, desired that liberal knowledge, as well as business training, should equip his son. To that end, after a boyhood with a tutor, young Gustav was sent to a German gymnasium, and then for business training to the house of Meir & Co., Bremen. Returning to New York in 1873, he entered the office of his father’s firm, Oelrichs & Co., and became the manager of the North German steamships. From that time to his forced retirement through ill health in 1910, Gustav Schwab’s career was a model of business intelligence, breadth of views, energy, and honor. He also took a beneficent and active part in our municipal affairs—in the movement for the nomination of our fellow-member, Francis M. Scott for Mayor in 1890, and four years later in the formation of the Committee of Seventy, and afterwards the Citizens’ Union. He was a leader in the sound money movement of 1892, and efficient as chairman of the Canal Improvement State Committee. He also used his tact and position to promote amity between Americans and Germans, and provide for our thousands of foreign emigrants.

His friends will remember his lovable nature, the charm of his companionship, his eager interest in study and in music, all of which entered into the virtue of this well-rounded life.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1913 Century Association Yearbook