Bio:I. Baumgartl

Isidor Baumgartl was born in Hungary in 1860. At the age of 11, in October 1871, he came to America and settled in Chicago. He received his education partly in Chicago public schools, later graduating from the Dyrenfurth College in 1878. He married Bertha Wilhartz in 1881, with whom he raised 5 children.

At the age of 17 he started his apprenticeship as a bookkeeper in the wholesale liquor house of the firm of Joseph Stein & Co., wholesale liquor dealers, and in 1879, on the death of the senior member, he was admitted to the firm, forming the co-partnership of Stein & Baumgartl. In 1882 the firm consolidated business with that of Adolph and Charles Stein and became known as Stein Bros. & Baumgartl. He severed active connection with that firm in 1887, engaging in the real estate business for a while. In 1889 he built the Calumet Distilling Co.'s distillery at New Chicago, a suburb of this city, and founded a small village surrounding the plant. He sold that distillery to the Whisky Trust in 1891. In October 1891, in company with his old associates, he incorporated the Monarch Brewing Co. This was successful enough that, in 1898, the plant was purchased by an American syndicate, and together with twelve other breweries formed the United Breweries Co. The syndicate elected him as president and general manager.

In addition to his brewery companies, he built Art Wall Paper Mills in 1900 and was president of that, as well as president of the Federal Cement and Tile Company, Bresco Manufacturing Company, Hesber Manufacturing Company, and other corporations. He was vice-president of the Associated Jewish Charities of Chicago and a member of the Board of Directors of Zion Congregation.

--

"The Jews of Illinois : their religious and civic life, their charity and industry, their patriotism and loyalty to American institutions, from their earliest settlement in the State unto the present time", by Herman Eliassof, 1901.

"The book of Chicagoans : a biographical dictionary of leading living men and women of the city of Chicago", ed. by John W. Leonard, A. N. Marquis & Co., 1905.

"American elite and sociologist, a distinct cyclopedia of twenty thousand American's best families, the national social blue book", by Thomas William Herringshaw, 1927.