Bok was born in
Den Helder,
Netherlands to an at-the-time wealthy, prominent family. After his father lost most of his wealth due to bad investment decisions, the family immigrated to
Brooklyn,
New York, when Edward was six years old. In Brooklyn, he washed the windows of a bakery shop after school to help support his family, in addition, he would also go into the street with a basket every day and collect stray bits of coal that had fallen in the gutter where the coal wagons had delivered fuel. By the time Bok was in his early teens, he was required to quit school to aid his family with financial support. His first full-time job, in 1876, was as an office boy with the
Western Union Telegraph company. In 1882, Bok began work with
Henry Holt and Company as a stenographer while also taking classes in the evenings. In 1884, he accepted an offer from
Charles Scribner's Sons to became its advertising manager. From 1884 until 1887, Bok was the editor of
The Brooklyn Magazine, and in 1886, he founded the Bok Syndicate Press, "the country's third syndicate with 137 newspapers subscribed". In 1896, Bok married
Mary L. Curtis, the daughter of Louisa and Cyrus Curtis. The
Journal also became the first magazine to refuse
patent medicine advertisements. In 1919, Bok retired from publishing. In 1924, Mary Louise Bok founded the
Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which she dedicated to her father, Cyrus Curtis, and in 1927, the Boks embarked upon the construction of
Bok Tower Gardens, near their winter home in
Mountain Lake Estates,
Lake Wales, Florida, which was dedicated on February 1, 1929, by the president of the United States,
Calvin Coolidge. Bok Tower is sometimes called a sanctuary and is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places as a
National Historic Landmark. Bok is used as an example in
Dale Carnegie's
How to Win Friends and Influence People. Bok died after a heart attack on January 9, 1930, in Lake Wales, within sight of his beloved
Singing Tower and was buried at the tower's base. Two of his grandsons are folk singer
Gordon Bok and former Harvard University President
Derek Bok.
Edward Bok and American domestic architecture In 1895, Bok began publishing in ''Ladies' Home Journal
plans for building houses which were affordable for the American middle class – from $1,500 to $5,000 – and made full specifications with regional prices available by mail for $5. Later, Bok and the Journal'' became a major force in promoting the "
bungalow", a style of residence which derived from India. Plans for these houses cost as little as a dollar, and the -story dwelling, some as small as 800 square feet, soon became a dominant form of new domestic architecture in the country. Bok's overall concern was to preserve his socially conservative vision of the ideal American household, with the wife as homemaker and child-rearer, and the children raised in a healthy, natural setting, close to the soil. To this end, he promoted the
suburbs as the best place for well-balanced domestic life.
Theodore Roosevelt said about Bok:[He] is the only man I ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architecture of an entire nation, and he did it so quickly and effectively that we didn't know it was begun before it was finished. One of his first commentaries on the issue clearly stated that "women were not yet ready for the vote". The
Journal's wide reach among American middle-class women made Bok a key ally of the
anti-suffrage movement. On the other hand, the magazine was an advocate of causes such as "conservation, public health, birth control, sanitation, and educational reform". == Awards and honors ==