AFA 20th Anniversary

Antiques & Fine Art 107 2020 D riven by an abiding love of American history, especially the Colonial Period, the late H. Richard Dietrich Jr. relished the pursuit of books, letters, artifacts, paintings, furniture, and other decorative arts and household items from the past (Fig. 1). He also knew early on that he wanted to make these works available to the public, and in 1963, created a foundation to be the recipient of the finest aspects of the collection. By the time of his death in 2007, the Dietrich American Foundation’s collection numbered over 2,400 pieces and was on loan to over thirty different institutions, with a focus on American history between 1740 and 1820. Growing up outside Philadelphia, in Villanova, the eldest of three brothers, Richard had a love for Pennsylvania and the greater Philadelphia area. The Dietrich family was originally from Reading, in Berks County, and was involved in the food industry, in particular, flour milling. In 1927, Richard’s father and his uncle Daniel purchased Luden’s Candy Company at the exceptionally young ages of nineteen and twenty-four, respectively (Fig. 2). In the Autumn of 1927, a newspaper article called Daniel Dietrich the “Lindbergh of Finance.” BY H. RICHARD DIETRICH III AND DEBORAH M. REBUCK Fig. 1: H. Richard Dietrich Jr. (1938-2007). Fig. 2: William Henry Luden was twenty years old when he began his candy business in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1879. By the time Daniel and his younger brother Richard purchased Luden’s Candy Company in October 1927, Luden’s had three hundred lines of candy, and William Luden was known as the Cough Drop King. Public Ledger , Philadelphia, Sunday Morning Edition, October 30, 1927.