Park Bench Statesman (Park Bench Philosopher)

Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-1965) was an American financier, statesman and philosopher who advised U.S. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Baruch like to walk along Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and sit on a bench in Central Park. When in Washington, DC, he stayed at a hotel near the White House and sat on a bench in Lafayette Park, near the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson.
 
A Baruch biography by Carter Field was titled Bernard Baruch, Park Bench Statesman (1944). Baruch was also less frequently called a “park bench philosopher.” Park benches in New York City and Washington have been dedicated to the famous “park bench statesman,” In 2015, a “Park Bench Statesman” sculpture at Anderson University (Anderson, SC) honored the South Carolina native. Baruch was born in Camden, South Carolina, in 1870. 
   
 
Wikipedia: Bernard Baruch
Bernard Mannes Baruch (/bəˈruːk/; August 19, 1870 – June 20, 1965) was an American financier, stock investor, philanthropist, statesman, and political consultant. After his success in business, he devoted his time toward advising U.S. Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt on economic matters and became a philanthropist.
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Park bench statesman
Baruch was well-known, and often walked or sat in Washington, D.C’s Lafayette Park and in New York City’s Central Park. It was not uncommon for him to discuss government affairs with other people while sitting on a park bench. This became his most famous characteristic.
 
In 1960, on his ninetieth birthday, a commemorative park bench in Lafayette Park across from the White House was dedicated to him by the Boy Scouts.
 
He continued to advise on international affairs until his death on June 20, 1965, in New York City, at the age of 94. His funeral at Temple Shaaray Tefila, the family synagogue, was attended by 700 people.[17] His grave is at Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, Queens, New York City.
 
dcMemorials.com
BARUCH Bench in the center of Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C.
This bench was frequented by Mr. Baruch during his visits to presidents Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and other presidents. A plaque was placed here in his honor in 1960, five years before his death, by the Boy Scouts of America.
 
19 November 1938, Rockford (IL) Register-Republic, “Baruch: ‘Practical Economist’” (photo story), pg. 11, col. 2:
Although he’s often called a “mystery man,” there’s no mystery about Baruch. These pictures explode any such myth. He lives quietly on New York’s Fifth Avenue, reflects on world trends on a park bench, and advises America to look after its defenses in a world of aggression and to “prepare to defend democratic ideals against all odds.”
 
7 August 1942,

, pg. 1, cols. 3-4:
Rubber Board Meets on Park Bench
Baruch, Compton and Conant Shoo Away Reporters
And Pigeons From ‘Office’ Near Jackson Statue
By IRVING PERLMETER
Associated Press Staff Writer
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The two benches were in the very heart of the park, in the shadow of the famous Andrew Jackson statue.
 
Reporters, however, could approach the meeting only long enough to be shooed away, along with the pigeons, by Mr. Baruch.
 
“It’s a good place to meet, isn’t it?” Mr. Baruch replied to an exclamation of surprise from one of his discoverers.
 
Actually, Mr. Baruch can nearly always be found in the park when he is in Washington. he calls it “my office.”
 
When in the Capital, he lives in a nearby hotel but likes to walk and sit in the park for the fresh air an exercise.
 
11 June 1943, Morning Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA), “Barush Hopes Byrnes Can Stop ‘Internal’ Rows” (AP), pg. 12-A, col. 2:
Baruch said he wouldn’t swap his favorite “office,” a park bench in the square opposite the White House, for a desk in the executive headquarters, where Byrnes holds forth. Favorable weather finds him on the bench a few hours every day he is in town. He ushered two college presidents there to inaugurate the Baruch committee’s rubber survey.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Bernard Baruch, park bench statesman.
Author: Carter Field
Publisher: New York ; London : Whittlesey house, McGraw-Hill book company, inc., [1944]
Edition/Format:   Print book : Biography : English
 
Google Books
A Jewish Tourist’s Guide to the U.S.
By Bernard Postal and Lionel Koppman
Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America
1954
Pg. 37:
Dyerville • A bench beneath the world’s largest tree, a 364-foot redwood in the heart of northern California’s redwood emporia, memorializes the noted park- bench philosopher and statesman, Bernard Baruch. The bench, a replica of the one across the street from the White House lawn on which Baruch dispensed his opinions while serving as unofficial adviser to three presidents, was hewn from another giant of the 2,000-year-old forest.
 
Google Books
Mr. Baruch
By Margaret L. Coit
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin
1957
Pg. 521:
TO THE NATION Bernard Baruch was the “Park Bench Statesman.” But to official Washington during those years of the Second World War, he was “the tall old trouble shooter.” There in Lafayette Square he sat, spring and autumn alike, bundled in a heavy overcoat. His bench, to which his mail was duly addressed and delivered, was just off dead center of the park, near the rear end of the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson. It was four feet six inches long, just big enough to accommodate Baruch and one average-sized Cabinet officer. Hard candy sometimes rattled in his pockets, but it was for himself, not for the pigeons or squirrels.
     
New York (NY) Times
Private Sector; Mr. Baruch’s Other Famous Park Bench
By Rick Gladstone (COMPILED BY MARK A. STEIN)
Published: May 11, 2003
For Sanford I. Weill, the chief executive of Citigroup, the Bernard Baruch College dinner last Wednesday at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan was a welcome respite.
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When Mr. Weill and his wife, Joan, were planning to move from Long Island to Manhattan in the early 1970’s, they once sat on a bench in Central Park and gazed at a building where they were thinking of buying an apartment. The bench was named after Mr. Baruch, who often sat there himself. (It wasn’t the bench that led to him being known as ‘‘the park bench statesman.’’ That one was in Lafayette Park, near the White House.)
 
WYFF4.com (Anderson, SC)
Anderson University unveils ‘Park Bench Statesman’
By Janice Limon
UPDATED 5:27 PM EDT Sep 24, 2015
ANDERSON, S.C. —Anderson University dedicated a new sculpture on campus Thursday honoring South Carolina native Bernard Mannes Baruch.
 
The bronze “Park Bench Statesman” sculpture is a gift to Anderson University from the late John Rainey and his wife Anne Edens Rainey.
 
An American statesman, philanthropist, and adviser to six presidents from Woodrow Wilson to John F. Kennedy, Baruch was from Camden and one of the state’s most noted early leaders of racial reconciliation.