How to Pronounce William Fortune (businessman)
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May 27, 1863 Died on 28 Jan 1942 (aged 78)
American businessman, journalist, and civic leader
GeminiWilliam Fortune Businessman - Place of Birth, Date of Birth, Age, Wiki, Facts, Net Worth, Birthday, Biography and Family
William Fortune Businessman, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Family, Facts, Age, Net Worth, Biography and More in FamedBorn.com
About William Fortune Businessman
- William Fortune (May 27, 1863 – January 28, 1942) was a wealthy American businessman, journalist, and civic leader who was a prominent figure in the development of Indianapolis, Indiana, for more than five decades.
- Fortune is best known for his support of paved city and state roads as part of the Good Roads Movement and leading a thirty-year effort to elevate railroad tracks in Indianapolis, in addition to leadership in several civic organizations.
- In 1890 he helped establish the Commercial Club, the forerunner to the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce; in 1916 he was a founder of the Indianapolis chapter of the American Red Cross; and in 1918 he led a local War Chest fundraising effort, which was a forerunner to the city's present-day United Way campaigns.
- In 1920 Fortune purchased the home where Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley once lived in Indianapolis in order to preserve it.
- Fortune retained the property, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, until the nonprofit James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association was formed in 1922.
- Fortune also acquired and donated a 30-acre (12-hectare) site in Indianapolis in 1930 for a U.S.
- Veterans Health Administration hospital that was completed in 1931. Fortune began his career in Indianapolis in 1882 as a newspaper reporter for the Indianapolis Journal (1882–88), worked briefly for the weekly Sunday Press (1888), and spent two years as a reporter and editorial writer for the Indianapolis News (1889–91).
- Fortune published Paving and Municipal Engineering (renamed Municipal Engineering in 1896), a paving industry trade magazine, from 1890 to 1911.
- Other business interests include serving as president (1910–24) of a group of independent telephone companies that later became part of Indiana Bell.
- Fortune was also member of the Eli Lilly and Company board of directors (1913–27).
- Fortune was an active promoter for the City of Indianapolis.
- He served as the Indianapolis Commercial Club's vice president (1894) and president (1897), as well as the first president of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce (1917).
- Fortune helped plan the construction of the Commercial Club's eight-story building, Indianapolis's first "skyscraper," which opened in 1893, the same year he served as executive director of the twenty-seventh encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, the city's first major convention.
- Fortune was also the first president of the Indianapolis Automobile Club (1904–06) and the first president of the Indianapolis chapter of the American Red Cross (1916–42).
- In his later years he was active at the national level in the Chamber of Commerce and the American Red Cross.
- He died in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis.
