Steve Procko
My last book “Captured Freedom” released in the fall of 2023 - CapturedFreedom.com
Since then, I have begun writing another fascinating historic non-fiction story that takes place between 1880 through 1920.
"Gilded Breeze" tells the story of the Breese family in New York.
The patriarch, James L. Breese Sr, known to his friends as Jimmie, is a wealthy man of many talents - architect with an engineering degree, amateur photographer in Alfred Stieglitz's circle, early racer of automobiles and the first sports cars, and social climber constantly craving fame. His family dates back to before the Revolutionary War and included many notable members including the Roosevelts and Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph.
His wife Fannie is the daughter of a Civil War General Robert B. Potter and has a family lineage as equally impressive as her husband.
But it was his close friendship with the architect Stanford White, with whom he threw notorious parties at The Carbon Studio, his Sixteenth Street photography studio, for which he became infamous. At the end of the Victorian era, many well-known members of society attended Stanny and Jimmie's soirées, Augustus St. Gaudens, Nikola Tesla, Charles Dana Gibson and Henry W. Poor to name a few. The wild affairs often featured scantly-clad underaged girls. When word got out, scandal followed. It cost Jimmy his reputation. It cost White his life.
The Breese's had four children - three boys, who all become successful engineers, and a daughter who becomes a successful artist and author. They all turned their backs on the social mores of the elite as they became adults.
Then in 1919, Jimmie's son Navy Lt. James L. Breese Jr. is a member of the crew of the NC4, the first plane to successfully accomplish a transatlantic flight].
His progeny's successes eclipse his penchant for fame, leaving his legacy fading in the "Gilded Breeze."
Since then, I have begun writing another fascinating historic non-fiction story that takes place between 1880 through 1920.
"Gilded Breeze" tells the story of the Breese family in New York.
The patriarch, James L. Breese Sr, known to his friends as Jimmie, is a wealthy man of many talents - architect with an engineering degree, amateur photographer in Alfred Stieglitz's circle, early racer of automobiles and the first sports cars, and social climber constantly craving fame. His family dates back to before the Revolutionary War and included many notable members including the Roosevelts and Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph.
His wife Fannie is the daughter of a Civil War General Robert B. Potter and has a family lineage as equally impressive as her husband.
But it was his close friendship with the architect Stanford White, with whom he threw notorious parties at The Carbon Studio, his Sixteenth Street photography studio, for which he became infamous. At the end of the Victorian era, many well-known members of society attended Stanny and Jimmie's soirées, Augustus St. Gaudens, Nikola Tesla, Charles Dana Gibson and Henry W. Poor to name a few. The wild affairs often featured scantly-clad underaged girls. When word got out, scandal followed. It cost Jimmy his reputation. It cost White his life.
The Breese's had four children - three boys, who all become successful engineers, and a daughter who becomes a successful artist and author. They all turned their backs on the social mores of the elite as they became adults.
Then in 1919, Jimmie's son Navy Lt. James L. Breese Jr. is a member of the crew of the NC4, the first plane to successfully accomplish a transatlantic flight].
His progeny's successes eclipse his penchant for fame, leaving his legacy fading in the "Gilded Breeze."
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