Magaziners of Humenne

Louis Magaziner

Louis Magaziner (born Leizer) was born in Humenne on March 7, 1877. He attended Philadelphia's magnet school, Central High School, and later earned a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He was the first of Magaziner to attend college, graduating in 1900. At Penn, Louis was a classmate and friend of Julian Abele, the first black architect to graduate from that University.¹ Louis was the only Jew in the program at the time, and their shared status as disparaged minorities in the predominantly wealthy WASP program was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. That's how Louis's son Henry told me the story. For another interpretation, see Louis Magaziner and Julian Abele: A Story of Unusual Friendship, a presentation given by Lena Magaziner Herbach's great-granddaughter.

Louis designed a wide variety of buildings, including hospitals such as Mt. Sinai Hospital, movie palaces such as the Uptown and the Midway, and college buildings such as the Hillel at Pennsylvania State University. Louis performed design work on the store and warehouse for the Markovitz Bros. department store, a business owned by Sadie's husband and his brothers. Louis's biography and further pictures can be found on the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings website.

On October 26, 1910, Louis married Selma Jonas, an American-born daughter of German immigrants. Selma was born in Philadelphia on January 2, 1887. They had three children.

Louis died at University Hospital in Philadelphia on May 19, 1956 at the age of 78, after a long battle with Hodgkin's Disease. He was 79 years old. Selma died a year later, on November 9, 1957, of cerebrovascular thrombosis. Her attending physician was their son-in-law, Irwin Jack Pincus. They were buried together at Adath Jeshurun.

Children of Louis Magaziner and Selma Jonas are:

1. Henry Jonas Magaziner (b: 13 SEP 1911; d: 25 DEC 2011)
2. Lena Louise Magaziner (b: 30 DEC 1914; d: 7 DEC 2007)
3. Richard Herman Magaziner (b: 27 AUG 1918; d: 22 APR 2010)

Henry Jonas Magaziner

Henry Jonas Magaziner was born in Philadelphia on September 13, 1911. Like his father, Henry attended Central High School, then earned a B.A. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in 1936. For the first few years after graduation, Henry worked as a draftsman at Louis's firm, then he spent several years working at other firms around the country. He returned to Louis's firm in 1946, and the firm became known as Louis & Henry Magaziner. Henry practiced as Magaziner Architects after Louis's death.

Henry married Reba Henkin in Philadelphia on June 19, 1938. Reba was born in Philadelphia on February 4, 1914, the daughter of Russian immigrants. Reba worked for many years as a teacher at Germantown Friends School. Henry and Reba had two children.

Henry had a deep devotion to historic preservation, perhaps due in part to watching his father "modernize" buildings of styles that were hated in the 1930s but were later revered. Henry was a key figure in the efforts to preserve Germantown's Victorian Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion. He worked as an architectural historian for the National Park Service from 1972 to 1987. In 1985, he was a founding member of the Delaware Valley chapter of the Association for Preservation Technology International. Henry earned several awards for his historic preservation work, and the Philadelphia chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) created an annual historic preservation award in his name. Henry remained active in the AIA Philadelphia's historic preservation committee well into his 90s.

In 2000, at the age of 89, Henry wrote his first book, The Golden Age of Ironwork. The book discussed the use of cast iron in architecture, an industry that was centered in his hometown of Philadelphia. He followed that with a children's book about the Liberty Bell in 2007, at the age of 96.

Henry's wife Reba died of Lou Gehrig's disease at Pennsylvania Hospital on November 10, 1997. Henry died at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia on Christmas day in 2011 at the age of 100.

Children of Henry Jonas Magaziner and Reba Henken are:

1. LIVING
2. LIVING

Lena Louise Magaziner Pincus

Lena Louise Magaziner was born in Philadelphia on December 30, 1914 in Philadelphia. She was one of the first women to study economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a bachelor's degree in 1936. She later earned a library degree at U.S.C. and worked as a reference librarian until she was 82 years old.

Lena married Irwin Jack Pincus in Philadelphia on September 24, 1939. Jack was born on December 2, 1912 in Braddock, PA. He earned a B.A. from University of Pennsylvania in 1934 and a medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University in 1937. He served in the Army during World War II. After the war, Jack was a gastroenterologist and a professor of medicine. He was one of the greatest collectors of medical history books in the United States. Jack was the first cousin of Irwin Nat Pincus, who married Arthur Magaziner's daughter Marjorie a few years later. Lena and Jack lived in Beverly Hills from the 1950s until his death. They had three children.

Jack died on October 12, 2000 while they were living in Beverly Hills, California, and was buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Lena moved to the Boston area after his death, where their oldest son, a doctor, resided. She spent her last few years at the Youville House assisted living facility in Cambridge. She died on December 7, 2007, just before her 93rd birthday, after a short illness.

Children of Lena Louise Magaziner and Irwin Jack Pincus are:

1. LIVING
2. LIVING
3. LIVING

Richard Herman Magaziner

Richard Herman Magaziner was born on August 27, 1918 in Philadelphia. Dick attended Central High School, then earned a degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1939. He attended Naval Communcation School at Harvard University, and served in the Navy before and during World War II, from 1940 to 1945. He worked for Connecticut General Life Insurance for more than 30 years. He was also active in civic affairs, serving as a member of the Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation board in the early 1970s and as Upper Dublin Township Commissioner between 1974 and 1981.

On June 22, 1948, Dick married Irene Dorothy Bany at First Lutheran Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. Irene was born in Schenectady, New York on May 20, 1921. She studied at Swarthmore College and Toby Coburn School of Fashion but ultimately earned her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She met Dick when she was working as a librarian in The Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania. They had three children.

From around the year 2000, Dick and Irene lived in a nursing unit at the Quadrangle in Haverford, Pennsylvania. He died there of congestive heart failure on April 22, 2010 and was buried at West Laurel Hill Cemetery outside of Philadelphia. Irene died there on March 11, 2018.

Children of Richard Herman Magaziner and Irene Dorothy Bany are:

1. LIVING
2. LIVING
3. LIVING

Footnotes

1.	Their friendship is discussed in many sources, including The Twilight of Splendor: Chronicles of the Age of American Palaces by James T. Maher (p. 372). See Abele's biography at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings.