# Stephen Birch

Stephen Birch (1873–1950) was a president of the Kennecott Copper Company.

## Early life

Birch was born in New York City on March 24, 1873as the second son of six children. His father was a Union Army sergeant who passed away when Birch was ten years old. Three years after her husband's death, his mother moved her six children from Brooklyn to Mahwah, New Jersey to be near relatives.$^{:1}$ The young Birches quickly became friends with the children of their neighbors, Theodore Havemeyer, the vice-president of American Sugar Refining Company, and his wife Lillie. Mrs. Havemeyer took a special interest in young Stephen, providing financial assistance for his education at Trinity School, New York University, and Columbia School of Mines.$^{:2}$He received his M.E. from Columbia in 1898.

## Career

At the prime of the Klondike gold rush in 1898, Birch decided to go to Alaska rather than continue working with an engineering team that was surveying for the New York City subway system.$^{:3}$ Mrs. Havemeyer offered to pay for his trip to Valdez, a newly established city named the port for an All-American route to Alaska's interior. Birch was able to travel to Valdez in the summer of 1898.
Reports of copper in this region of Alaska had emerged decades earlier in the 19th century, and had attracted the attention of the United States Geological Survey, whose geologists later guided prospectors seeking copper.
Birch was in Valdez when some of the prospectors returned there in the fall of 1900. He purchased 21 claims and with the backing of the Havemeyers, the property ownership was later switched to the new Alaska Copper and Coal Company with H. 0. Havemeyer as President and Stephen Birch as manager.
Materials were hauled in by boat and horse to the remote site at the base of the Kennicott Glacier. In need of proper resources, Birch formed an organization and sought out the help of Daniel Guggenheim and J.P Morgan. It became known as Kennecott Mining Company with offices in New York City and Birch as Managing Director. In 1915, Birch became the president of the reorganized Kennecott Copper Company. As resources were depleted at the Alaska Mines, which closed in 1938, Birch led the diversification into related products and alternate sources of copper in Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Chile. Under his direction, Kennecott Copper experienced growth; In 1915, the firm had 450 employees and $11 million in sales.
Birch resigned as president of the Kennecott Copper Company in 1933 and was replaced by E.T. Stannard. Birch continued as Chairman of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee. In addition to his positions with Kennecott, Birch was president and director of the Alaska Steamship Company, chairman of the board of directors of the Braden Copper Company, and a director of the Alaska Development and Mineral Company, the Banker's Trust company of New York, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company, the Colorado and Southern Railway Company and the Northern Pacific Railway Company.$^{:75}$
At the time of his death, Kennecott held nearly 15 percent of the world's known copper resources and was the largest copper producer in the United States. In the year of his death, the company employed 28,872 employees and had sales of $177,250,036.$^{:75}$
Kennecott Copper Company's original location in Alaska is now frequently referred to as a "ghost town" and is a tourist attraction. The buildings and mills are still standing but remain untouched, as the company's Alaska location closed down many years ago.
Birch is positively renowned for his successful business ventures and has received various honors such as being inducted into the Mining Hall of Fame and being named among the 20th Century American Leaders by Harvard Business School.

## Personal life

Birch married Mary C. Rand in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 24, 1916. His best man was longtime friend, Henry O. Havemeyer. He and his wife had two children named Stephen and Mary. The Havemeyers sold their mansion and 730 acres of their estate to Birch; the York Room was added to the mansion for his daughter Mary and her husband in the 1920s. He lived in the mansion with his family until he died at age 68 at Doctors Hospital on December 29, 1940. Birch is buried at Ferncliff Mausoleum in Hartsdale, New York. A stained glass window depicting Alaskan mountain scenery adorns this mausoleum. $^{:75}$
After his death, his estate went to his son, Stephen. Stephen died in 1970 at the same time that the founders of Ramapo College were searching for land to build the school on. After visiting the land, it was decided that the Birch estate would be the new home to Ramapo College. The final settlement on all of the Birch property was not concluded until 1972 for $3,133,000 or a little over $10,000 an acre. The Birch mansion is now used as an administration building at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Birch was said to be a very private man. During his lifetime, he avoided publicity and seldom gave interviews or had his picture taken, though he did have his portrait painted in 1911 by Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury. Katherine Wilson wrote for Copper Tints magazine that "Stephen Birch is personally little known. Today one of the financial powers in New York City, he shuns publicity and evades acclaim as a captain of industry. But to those who know him, he is a man of deep and broad humanity, inspired in all that he does by a keen sense of his responsibility to the national welfare. With his intimates, he is a finely perceptive and generous friend, of an unshakable loyalty. Stephen Birch is an outstanding American."$^{:77–78}$

## Philanthropy

In 1938 he founded the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation, Inc. to support health services, hospitals, and civic organizations. It provided major funding for the Stephen Birch Aquarium-Museum at the University of California, San Diego. Even though 2010 marks the 70th anniversary of his death, his legacy still lives on through this foundation, which recently made a $10 million contribution to Sharp HealthCare Foundation for Transforming Health Care in San Diego: the Campaign for Sharp Healthcare, the capital campaign launched in 2003 to raise funds for a new health care facility at Sharp Memorial Hospital. In recognition of this generous gift, Sharp will name the new facility the Stephen Birch Healthcare Center at Sharp Memorial Hospital. The Birch contribution is the largest in Sharp's history and brings the total that the Stephen and Mary Birch Foundation has donated to Sharp to more than $16 million.