Bella Clara Landauer (1874-1960) was a collector and historian in a broad variety of fields, most notably in the areas of commercial and trade art, printing, aeronautics, opera and theater, and themed sheet music. The Bella C. Landauer collection of music based on texts by Walt Whitman contains primarily musical settings of texts by Walt Whitman in addition to instrumental scores inspired by his writings, all collected by Landauer.
Bella Clara Landauer (1874-1960) was a collector and historian in a broad variety of fields, most notably in the areas of commercial and trade art, printing, aeronautics, opera and theater, and themed sheet music.
She was born Bella Clara Frackenthal, in 1874 in New York, the only child of a successful corset manufacturer. She attended a private girls school in New York City (often incorrectly identified as the Hewitt School). In early life, she became proficient in several languages.
In 1900, she married Ian Nathan Landauer, a successful fabric importer and salesman. They had two children, James D. Landauer (1902-1979) and William I. Landauer (1906-1999).
During World War I, Landauer served as a volunteer in the New York chapter of the American Field Service (now called the AFS Intercultural Program), an organization that sent volunteers to France to drive ambulances, bringing wounded soldiers from the battlefields to temporary military hospitals, as well as driving other transport vehicles to bring supplies to the front.
In 1923, Landauer's doctor recommended that she retire from active service. She began her voracious collecting activities at this time. In 1926, she moved to the Drake Hotel in New York City, and donated her enormous collection of manufacturers' trade cards to the New York Historical Society, earning her the title of honorary curator. Initally, Landauer had kept her collections in a former kitchen in her home, but in the late 1930s, the New York Historical Society created a special room in their building to house her collections. She did curatorial work at the Historical Society, organizing, cataloging, and publishing on her collections..
Bella Landauer died on April 23, 1960.
The Bella C. Landauer collection of Whitman music is arranged in three series:
This series consists of works for orchestra, mostly with voices. The vocal forces employed in the works vary, including soloists and choruses. Most of the scores are in piano-vocal reductions.
Collection was donated by Bella C. Landauer in February 1960.
Collection was originally processed in August 1964 as Mus. Res. *MS M33. Collection was rehoused and inventoried by Mary Freeman in 2015.