Banigan, Joseph (1839-1898)
Role: benefactor of BrownDates:
Portrait Location: Library Annex
Artist: Breul, Hugo (1854-1910)
Portrait Date: 1899
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 24 1/2
Framed Dimensions: 38
Brown Portrait Number: 74
Brown Historical Property Number: 1204
Joseph Banigan was born in Ireland in 1839. At eight years of age, fleeing the ravages of the Irish potato famine, he came to the United States. Banigan was nine years old when he began to work for his living, taking a job at the New England Screw Company. Four years later, he became a jeweler's apprentice. He practiced this trade throughout his childhood, but at the age of twenty-one, he left the jewelry business and began working in the field of rubber manufacturing. The nineteenth century was a particularly good time to enter the rubber industry, since Charles Goodyear's vulcanizing technology, patented in 1844, greatly expanded the marketability and utility of rubber products. Banigan quickly took advantage of this, and by 1866, had founded his own firm, the Woonsocket Rubber Company, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, which manufactured mainly boots and shoes. The company proved so profitable that within the course of a year, Banigan was able to repay the $10,000 loan he had taken to start it. One way Banigan cut business costs was by dealing directly with rubber gatherers in Brazil, instead of allowing dealers and other middlemen to raise the cost of trade. By 1893, Banigan's company imported more rubber than any other individual manufacturer in the United States. His desperate competitors merged to form the United States Rubber Company. When they made it worth his while, Banigan sold Woonsocket Rubber Company to this conglomerate (which immediately became a monopoly) and took over as its president and general manager. By 1896, it commanded more national market share than any other rubber manufacturer. That same year, though, Banigan tired of disputes with his board, and left the United States Rubber Company, a move which resulted in litigation and acrimony. Undeterred, the shrewd Irish-American began the Joseph Banigan Rubber Company, which competed successfully with the United States Rubber Company. Banigan's business competitors may have breathed a private sigh of relief at the news of his unexpected death in 1898 from complications following a gallbladder operation. While Banigan's main business interest was rubber, he also had side businesses which were equally successful. For example, by 1891, he had created a monopoly of companies that manufactured washing machine wringers. This business he called the American Wringer Company. He was also the director of the Industrial Trust Company and the Commercial National Bank of Providence, as well as a board member of various different local and national companies. The Banigan Building, at 10 Weybosset Street, in Providence, was built in 1896 as his headquarters. It is considered the first skyscraper of the city, and still stands as a memorial to this very successful Rhode Island businessman.
Banigan is known as much for his generosity to charities as he is for his ruthlessness in business. He built the Little Sisters of the Poor, a home for the elderly in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1881. He was also concerned with the plight of young women in the work force and built Providence's St. Maria Working Girls Home in 1894. Numerous charities were supported by immense donations from Banigan, and his generosity was honored by Pope Leo XIII, who made Banigan a knight of the Papal bodyguard.
Banigan's daughter, Alice Margaret Banigan Sullivan, gave this portrait to Brown in 1899 in honor of her father, along with a gift of $10,000 for the library. It was painted in 1899 by a Providence artist, Hugo Breull (1854-1910). Breull had been a student of the famous American impressionist, William Merritt Chase. This portrait was not painted from life, but it is not known if photographs or other painted portraits were used as a source.