Writer, Publisher. He received notoriety as the creator and editor of "Vanity Fair" magazine in 1914 as well as art critic and collector, and toastmaster of New York. He was the son of Frederic Crowninshield (1845-1918), who was an artist, instructor, and Director of The American Academy in Rome for two years, and his mother, Helen Susette Fairbanks Crowninshield (1841-1924). He was the brother of Edward A. Crowninshield, (1870-1938) an authority on antiques. He was a descendant of Johannes Caspar Richter von Kronensheldt, who was of an ennobled Saxon family, a physician and an emigrant from Germany in the late 17th century to Salem, Massachusetts. He anglicized his German name to Crowninshield. Born Francis Welch "Frank" Crowninshield, he was a cosmopolitan Parisian, educated in Rome and widely traveled. Well-known in New York's publishing, art, and social communities, he held a unique place in the cultural life of New York City as the undiminished and suave advocate of gracious living, elegant manner, and true urbanity; having a wide acquaintance in literary, artistic and social circles. Because of this, and his humor, and ease as an after-dinner speaker, he was frequently asked to preside over large functions; a role he unmistakably loved. He was arbiter elegantiarum in every field that his ceaseless and urbane activity touched. A 19th-century man by birth, his heart belonged to an earlier era. Frank Crowninshield held title as, "The last and greatest of a species known as the gentleman." While editor of "Vanity Fair," he sought the best authors in the United States to be published in the magazine and was the first magazine to publish copies of European paintings. He held the post until 1935, but was later published in "Vogue" and "The Century Magazine." He was a member of the Knickerbocker Club. The Crowninshields' gravestones were designed by American architect Charles Adams Platt in 1925.