Henry Probasco (born in

Newtown, Connecticut Newtown is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It is part of the Greater Danbury metropolitan area as well as the New York metropolitan area. Newtown was founded in 1705, and later incorporated in 1711. As of the 2020 censu ...

on 4 July 1820; died 25 October 1902) was an American hardware magnate noted for the

Tyler Davidson Fountain The Tyler Davidson Fountain or ''The Genius of Water'' is a statue and fountain located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is regarded as the city's symbol and one of the area's most-visited attractions. It was dedicated in 1871 and is the centerpiece of ...

, Probasco Fountain and the Henry Probasco House. He had an interest in art and was selected as a "centennial commissioner" from Ohio. Probasco made his fortune as a hardware merchant, selling his business in 1866. He then traveled to Europe and commissioned the Royal Bavarian Foundry in Munich to create the 45-foot-high bronze fountain named for his business partner and brother-in-law, Tyler Davison. He also attended the Universal Exposition of 1867 in Paris where he made an unprecedented bid of 150,000 francs for Meissonier's ''Friedland.'' Probasco’s rare book collection was purchased by the

Newberry Library The Newberry Library is an independent research library, specializing in the humanities and located on Washington Square in Chicago, Illinois. It has been free and open to the public since 1887. Its collections encompass a variety of topics rela ...

. The collection, “some 2,500 volumes purchased for $52,924, included incunabula, Shakespeare folios, Grolier bindings, rare Bibles (among them the King James, first edition), ten early editions of Homer, nine of Dante, and eight of Horace, to mention only a few special works,” was the basis of what would become the library’s major rare book collection.

References

American art collectors 1820 births 1902 deaths People from Newtown, Connecticut 19th-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1820s-stub