Bruce Barton and the Making of a Modern America

Did you know the man who co-founded what became the Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn advertising agency (BBDO) was Bruce Barton, a 1903 OPRF High School graduate?

Learn more about Barton as a pioneering advertising giant, politician and author when Richard Fried, an emeritus history professor at University of Illinois-Chicago, gives a talk at 3 p.m. this Sunday, July 12, at OPRF Museum, 129 Lake St.

Fried wrote the book The Man Everybody Knew: Bruce Barton and the Making of Modern America in 2005. The title of the book is a variation on “The Man Nobody Knows,” a book Barton wrote in 1925 in which he presents Jesus as the “founder of modern business” in an effort to make the Christian story accessible to businessmen of the time. As a professor, Fried participated in Fulbright lectureships in Spain and Vietnam.

Barton, active in the Republican Party, represented Manhattan in Congress for two terms, 1937-1941, and was a lead opponent to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Barton’s father, the Rev. William Barton, served as minister of Oak Park’s First Congregational Church, now First United Church, from 1899 to 1924. The elder Barton was a notable Lincoln scholar whose library is now part of the University of Chicago’s collection.

Regular museum admission rates will apply for this program-- members are free!