Sewell Lee Avery (November 4, 1874 – October 31, 1960) was an American businessman who achieved early prominence in gypsum mining and became president of the United States Gypsum Company (1905–1936). At the beginning of the Depression, he was asked by J.P. Morgan & Co. to turn around the failing Montgomery Ward and succeeded in restoring its profitability by making huge changes. In 1936, Fortune magazine said that Avery was "generally held to be the No. 1 Chicago businessman." In the postwar years, however, he failed to take advantage of the demand for durable goods and did not expand Montgomery Ward, costing it prominence in the retail field.
Avery was active in Chicago civil activities, for instance, supporting the Commercial Club's plan for a Museum of Science and Industry and serving as its first president. He was also prominent in social circles, and in 1912 founded the private Lincoln Park Gun Club with Oscar F. Mayer, Philip K. Wrigley, and other prominent Chicagoans.
Early life and education
Sewell Lee Avery was born in Saginaw, Michigan as the son of Ellen Lee and Waldo A. Avery, who were a leading business family of the region, with interests in lumber, banking and mining. His father's family were considered lumber barons. Avery attended public schools in Saginaw and Detroit, and the Michigan Military Academy. He earned a bachelor of laws degree in 1894 from the University of Michigan.
Marriage and family
Avery married Hortense Lenore Wisner soon after graduation. They started out in a small flat by the lake when he was taken on at a gypsum plant in Alabaster, Michigan. (His father was an investor in it and helped him get a start.) They had the first bathtub in town.
Career
In 1894, his father gave him a role in managing a gypsum plant in a small town in Michigan. Avery changed the name to Alabaster Company, after the town, because he liked the sound of it. This was one of several companies that in 1901 became part of the consolidated gypsum concern United States Gypsum Company. Then working as a sales manager in Buffalo, Avery became president in 1905. He kept that position until 1936, managing the company through extended growth. After that, he served as chairman of the company until 1951. With his brother Waldo Avery, he was a 3.6% stakeholder in USG.
Noticing his success, J.P. Morgan & Co. invited him on to the board of US Steel in 1931. That same year, at the beginning of the Depression, Morgan & Co. invited Avery to take on the challenge of re-establishing the profitability of Montgomery Ward, of which it owned a majority, offering Avery a generous salary and stock options. After rapid expansion of retail outlets through the 1920s, from 10 stores in 1926 to 554 in 1930, it was rapidly losing money. Avery began as chairman by cost cutting and closing stores, replacing catalog managers with experienced chain-store managers, and reducing lines that were losing money.
He was admired; an employee later said of this time:
I never saw such a mass movement forward in a business. Avery turned the place inside out, even to the fixtures and decorations. All the fellows were hustling and bustling to make the grade in a big way. Everyone wanted to get in there and pitch for the old man.
By making the company become profitable, Avery earned great wealth in the process through significant stock options. His strong control and caution worked against him as the company began to recover in the mid-1930s, when he might have allowed some expansion, but he believed the economy too fragile.
As president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, Avery supported Julius Rosenwald's idea for an industrial museum as early as 1925. Rosenwald had built up Sears, Roebuck as a strong competitor to Montgomery Ward. Avery followed up on his early support and served as the first president of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
He supported politically conservative causes. He was a financier of the American Liberty League and a national adviser for one of its front organizations, the Crusaders. Avery gave generously to the Church League of America (CLA). He was one of many successful businessmen who did not favor the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Avery endowed several professorial chairs at the University of Chicago, and he financially supported research and expeditions of the Field Museum of Natural History. A species of venomous coral snake, Micrurus averyi, is named in his honor.