Rufus Cutler Dawes, President of 1933 Chicago World’s Fair and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry
8th Cousin, 3 times removed
Rufus Cutler Dawes July 30, 1867 – January 8, 1940) was an American businessman from a prominent Ohio family. Dawes was born in Marietta, Ohio, to American Civil War Brigadier General Rufus R. Dawes and his wife Mary Beman Gates Dawes. His middle name, Cutler, was in honor of one of his father's Civil War, General Lysander Cutler. He was active in many gas and lighting utilities, becoming president of the Union Gas & Electric Company, Metropolitan Gas & Electric Company, and Dawes Brothers, Inc.
He served on the expert’s commission preparing the Dawes Plan for his brother Charles in 1924. Because of this work, Dawes was again asked to work on the reparations problem in 1929, this time as assistant to Owen D. Young developing the Young Plan. Although the Young plan effectively reduced Germany's heavy World War I reparations obligations, it was opposed by conservative parts of the political spectrum in Germany including Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Dawes’ most famous work (for which he was pictured on the cover of Time Magazine on May 22, 1933) was as the person who developed and ran the famous Chicago World’s Fair of 1933 (aerial photo of the Fair on Lake Michigan below). Dawes was a member of The Commercial Club of Chicago and served as president of the Club in 1925-26.
He was president of A Century of Progress Corporation from 1927 until his death in 1940. From 1934 until his death, Dawes was concurrently president of the world's fair organization and of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, one of the largest science museums in the world, home to more than 35,000 artifacts and nearly 14 acres of hands-on exhibits, including the U-505 Submarine, the only German U-boat in the United States.
