Photography genius: George R Lawrence & "The hitherto impossible

According to the recollection of his sister Laura, George and Alice's marriage "turned out unhappily and culminated in divorce in 1913."38 Later, while at the Marshall Field store in downtown Chicago to purchase linen fabric for his aircraft, he met Adele Frances "Della" Page. She was a St. Louis native, the daughter of Henry J. Page, an architect and builder. The fifty-year-old George and twenty-two-year-old Della, four years younger than George's son Raymond, were married in 1916.

The newlyweds lived in a boardinghouse, then rented a northside apartment before eventually purchasing a two-story frame home at 1319 Hood Avenue. Clara Antoinette, the first of four daughters, was born in 1917. Her younger siblings were Virginia Lee, Ruth Adele, and Martha Louise Lawrence.

Successful in the aviation field, Lawrence and a partner, Harry S. Lewis, built a prototype closed-cabin flying boat. In addition, Lawrence obtained patents for automobile "starters" to replace hand-cranking, and for air-conditioning and industrial heating equipment.

At home, he continually instructed his daughters to think through a project to completion: "Whatever you need is right at hand. Look around, and you will find it. Don't act until you think it out. Think! Think!" Daughters Clara and Louise remembered that he always followed his own advice.

Each winter he made an ice rink in the back yard of their home, with electric lights strung for nighttime skating by his children and their friends. A summer feature of the home-and a delight to sweltering neighbors-was Lawrence's invention of water-cooled air dispersed into the rooms through ducts built high in the interior walls. Over the years Lawrence maintained a friendship with and admiration for W. D. Boyce, his host on the African trip. The Lawrence home was filled with souvenirs and hunting trophies, including a lion mounted for him by safari companion Carl Akeley. In the mid-1920s, Lawrence bought a small island in the Wisconsin River off the shore of Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Della and their daughters spent summers at "Lawrence Island," with George visiting on weekends.

Within a few years, however, he suffered a debilitating stroke, which prevented him from earning sufficient income to support the family He began a small business analyzing camera lenses, but eventually was forced to sell their home and rent a nearby apartment at 1432 Highland Avenue. On a visit to Lawrence Island with Della, his daughter Clara and her husband, Lawrence became ill and asked to return to Chicago. He died in the apartment on December 15, 1938.

Funeral services were held at St. Gertrude's Catholic Church in Chicago, with burial at St. Joseph Cemetery, Manteno. The survivors included Della, his two sons and four daughters.' Longtime friend H. H. Slawson wrote of Lawrence, "He left behind him a path of photographic achievement that marked him as one of the foremost pioneers in fields distinctive because of their daring and unconventionality."41

The George R. Lawrence studio was acquired by Kaufmann-Fabry Studios, well-known photographers in downtown Chicago for many years.42 Collections of Lawrence photographs are held by the Library of Congress, the Chicago Historical Society, and the Chicago Architectural and Photographing Company.