Frederick William Gookin
(1853-1936)

Frederick William Gookin was born in Ludlow, Vermont, on
August 2, 1853. He was educated in Joliet, Illinois, in the public
schools and under private tutors. He started his career in banking
in 1870 as a messenger and teller at the First National Bank of
Joliet and progressed through a number of positions with other
banks. He was assistant city treasurer of Chicago in 1901-02.

Gookin had a deep interest in Japanese history and culture,
particularly Japanese art. He was a life member of the Asiatic So-
ciety of Japan, a member of the Japan Society of London, the Japan
Society of New York and the Societe Franco-Japonaise de
Paris, and an honorary life member of the Ukiyoe Society of
Japan. In 1913 he became curator of the Buckingham Collection of
Japanese Prints at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Gookin was the author of a large number of articles, on subjects
ranging from Japanese art to banking and family genealogy. He is
best known to us, however, as the author of the Club's first history,
The Chicago Literary Club: A History of Its First Fifty Years, cover-
ing the period 1874 through 1924. Skilled with a brush as well as
the pen, Gookin for many years also embellished the Club's year-
book covers and pages and other Club publications with designs
of his own creation. In recent years some of these delightful minia-
ture works of art have been incorporated as design elements in pa-
pers published by the Club.

Gookin became a member of the Literary Club in 1877. He
served as recording secretary and treasurer for a period of forty
years, from 1880 to 1920, and as president during the 1921-22 sea-
son. He presented twenty-one papers during his nearly sixty years
of membership. One of them—Our Defective American Banking
System: A Diagnosis and Prescription, presented November 2, 1908
—was published by the Club. Gookin died January 17, 1936.

Read before the Club: January 4, 1999