John Ames Mitchell

Who was John Ames Mitchell?

John Ames Mitchell was a publisher, architect, artist and novelist. He was regarded as a Renaissance man who kept to himself but influenced many. A Harvard University educated architect who studied at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in 1883 he co-founded Life magazine with Andrew Miller. Serving as president, Mitchell held a 75 percent interest in the magazine with the remainder by Miller in his job as secretary-treasurer. Both men retained their holdings until their deaths. Much more like today's New Yorker than the Life of the later 20th century, Mitchell's magazine discovered and encouraged many fine writers and artists at the turn of the century, such as Charles Dana Gibson, the illustrator who created the Gibson Girl. It covered the literary scene as well as political and social issues. He and Horace Greeley of the New York Herald Tribune founded the Fresh Air Fund, which for many years operated the Life Fresh Air camp for city kids on the site of today's Branchville School in Ridgefield, Connecticut, the town in which Mitchell also lived.