MN’s ‘Magellan’ made his mark
- Sr Perspective
- Jul 31
- 7 min read
Cold Spring man was writer, composer, journalist, architect, and more!
By Bill Vossler
Probably few people in the history of Minnesota have accomplished more in a wide field of endeavors than the late Glanville Smith of Cold Spring. And he not only accomplished many things, he did them very well.
As Sister Owen Lindblad wrote in the St. Cloud Times in 2000, 13 years after Glanville’s death, “The man was called the ‘Magellan out of Minnesota,’ for discovering the world we live in because his enthusiasm for life led him on far flung journeys into exotic lands.”
St. Cloud resident Dan Rethmeier, a friend of Glanville’s despite a 40-year age difference, attested to that. “I knew him since my birth, when he wrote in the inside cover of The Adventures of Tippy,” said Rethmeier. “He wrote, ‘To Danny from Glanny.’ To me, he was the outside world. He had the first Mercedes in Cold Spring, and he traveled to England and back on the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.”
Glanville spent a year biking England, and sent British stamps back for Dan’s stamp collection.
“A lot of them. In one letter he said his English friend managing the royal wedding in 1981 told him they had to order a wider chair for the King of Conga, who weighed over 300 pounds. I received many comments like that from him.”
Professional Writer
These accomplishments of Glanville Smith include a long and varied list: professional published writer: By the time Glanville graduated from high school, he had been creative, writing in his journals, and composing “The Tech Rouser” school song--still used today.
Over the years he composed other music, including a new national anthem, two books of organ songs, titled Six Preludes, Six Interludes, Six Amens,” while the second is named A Christmas Wreath. Some of his organ music was played at the local Presbyterian Church.
While at the University of Minnesota he wrote several plays, which, he said, “actually got acted on the campus, although one was a flop. But I was told Jinx of 23 was ‘The most clever piece of comedy ever produced at the university.’” Others included Cinnamon Rolls, The Blue God, and Riquiqui.
He worked at the Cold Spring Granite Co. for 50 years, doing cemetery features like memorials to mausoleums and altars.
In that role he appeared on the cover of Concept, a national cemetery trade magazine, where his article inside, “Sculpture For Prayer,” was well-received.
But when work lagged at the Granite Company he was allowed to spend time away from Cold Spring, where he could indulge his lifetime desire to write. He lived near Ely for a while, where he wrote “My Winter in the Woods,” a piece The Atlantic Monthly published in April, 1934.
Not long afterwards, The Atlantic Monthly paid all expenses for him to travel the South Pacific to study West Indies cultures of Fiji, New Zealand, Tasmania and Australia. An Atlantic editorial said, “For our readers’ pleasure Glanville Smith is now gallivanting in the Antipodes.” Glanville published more articles in the magazine.
A second work, “Minnesota, Mother of Lakes and Rivers,” ran in National Geographic magazine as the lead piece only a year later, in the March 1935 issue.
That an unknown writer would be published in high-powered magazines like these attests to the ability of Glanville Smith.
Thus 35-year-old Glanville earned a $2,000 Guggenheim Fellowship to research culture in the West Indies, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Santo Domingo and Antigua, out of which came one of his books, Many a Green Isle.
As a journalist and columnist, for years he wrote “Main Street Asides,” a column in the Cold Spring Record, under the name Y.U.G.--“Your Uncle Glanny.” He also wrote several hundred journals about his life and the people in Cold Spring, now kept in the Stearns County History Center.
Architecture Man
After high school he attended the University of Minnesota for a major in architecture. A Minneapolis newspaper wrote that at one point Architecture Professor Leon Arnal said to Glanville, “Mr. Smith, you are an amateur.” Instead of getting angry, Glanville agreed. Nevertheless he continued in architecture, and eventually proved the professor wrong, winning first place in an architecture contest at the University, and second in Minnesota.
After graduation from the University of Minnesota’s School of Architecture in 1924, over the years Glanville either designed, or had a major hand in designing, a series of buildings all over the United States, as summarized from his funeral brochure: “first was the Ziegfield Theater in New York City, which he considered perhaps his finest. Glanville attended the first play there, Rio Rita, where Charles Lindbergh had to leave early to get enough sleep before he flew the Atlantic.”
Glanville designed a library in Baltimore; the Minneapolis Bell Telephone headquarters; the Bankers Life Insurance Building in Des Moines, Iowa; the 48-step approach to the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge. Each granite step represents a state in order of its admission to the Union.
According to co-worker Rollie Barthelemy at Granville’s retirement party, “Granville was instrumental in designing Soldier Field in Chicago.”
Dan said Glanville did grunt work for famous architect Joseph Urban, in New York City. Dan added, “Urban designed the Mar-a-Logo Club and since the main architect always gets credit for good works, it wouldn’t surprise me if Glanville helped design Mar-a-Lago, which at that time was created for Marjorie Merriweather Post.”
He also designed post offices, war memorials, and monuments all over the United States, including a gorgeous monument for P. H. Alexander, the head of Cold Spring Granite Co., in the St. Boniface Cemetery in Cold Spring.
His artistry is found in how some of his many journals were hand-decorated, or calligraphed, as well as the map he made, a highly-detailed drawing locating all the historical markers, ox-cart trails, roads, railroad lines, and more, in central Minnesota.
Other Abilities
According to Bill Morgan in a 2017 issue of The St. Cloud Times, “Glanville was also involved in designs for ship hulls, anchor chains and tank parts during World War II.”
Glanville and Cold Spring Kids
Of Glanville being a naturalist, former Stearns County Museum archivist John Decker, who grew up in Cold Spring, said Glanville always had his house filled with young Cold Spring kids. “He would take us out in the woods and point out plants and name them, both their regular name and their Latin name. We thought it was amazing.”
Glanville also owned land, and donated 125 acres near Avon to St. Cloud State as a wilderness laboratory, Morgan wrote. He added, that Smith stipulated that the wooded property “not be altered or developed, except to maintain existing roads and hiking paths.”
Dan Rethmeier said his dad got to know Glanville, “because their offices were down the hall from each other in the Cold Spring Granite Building, so they had constant exposure.
“He was known as the face of Cold Spring Granite, and often gave tours,” said Rethmeier. “Because my parents had him over to our house at times, he was a presence in my life. He gave me many gifts, including when I was 10 the book Farmer Boy by Laura Ingall Wilder, and a United States puzzle to my sister Julie. He gave me three Confederacy Civil War era covers for my stamp collection. And his calligraphy decorated our house in Cold Spring.”
He was kind, Dan said.
“He owned the first Mercedes in town, and when he was in the vehicle and saw kids out on the street, he’d honk out ‘Shave and a hair cut, two bits’ on his horn.”
In the summer of 1968, Glanville had Dan and Dan’s girlfriend over for lunch because she was going to England. “His entire office was lined with books. Glanville was a prolific writer. He always wrote with a wide pen, including letters he wrote to me.”
History
His historical work was wide-spread, with the journals at the Stearns County History center, and his newspaper columns. He wrote “A History of Ornaments” for Design Hints magazine, published for memorial designers, worked on a history of Cold Spring Granite, and erected historical stone markers, rejuvenated the Stearns County History Center, among other historical work.
And he loved what he did. In 1945 he wrote, “When I am in the thick of detailing some panel of ecclesiastical symbols, or an inscription in the old Irish alphabet of the Book of Kells, I sometimes wonder why they pay me for doing these things that I so gladly would do for nothing.”
Positive and Lovable
In the end, Glanville Smith came in as a positive and lovable man. Minnesota Writer magazine wrote in 1945, “There are a few people who view the world so keenly and sympathetically that they seem to absorb its very flavor. To them the earth… is a good place to live, enjoy, and appreciate.”
The piece added that if such people had a sense of humor and discrimination in the use of words, they become the best essay writers. Glanville Smith is one of these fortunate people.”
When flowers were stolen from his garden Glanville ran a notice in the Cold Spring Record: “Will the person who dug the trollius (yellow globe-flower) from my place at Pleasant Lake, please see that it is planted in a partial shade. It will not do well in full sun. In the winter it needs only light protection. Since this is perhaps the oldest specimen of a flower not yet common in local gardens it deserves well of its new ‘owner.’”
He was also an accomplished poet. This poem celebrates the history of brewing in Cold Spring:
That damsite and our famous spring
Were just the very sort of thing
The pioneers were looking for;
Thus it wasn’t long before
They had a gristmill humming here,
Also a brewery brewing beer.
And now the granite long ago
Uncovered by the icy flow--
Whether at Rockville or at Isle
Or down at Morton--keeps a pile
Of local people earning money.
Well, folks, ain’t it kind of funny
That even now you earners base your
Earnings on a goldarn glacier?
In Minnesota Writes he wrote, “ ... I live as useful a life as my lights permit, enjoying hobby and work both, and taking my place in the community as a common citizen.”
Obviously he wasn’t such a common man after all.
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