This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. His passion for economy was carried to such an abnormal stage that he refused even to engage a tailor to mend his garments.3 He was unmarried, and generally attended to his own wants. Unlike the founder of the fortune the present Longworth generation never strays from the set formulas of respectability ; it has intermarried with other rich families : and Nicholas, a namesake and grandson of the original, and a representative in Congress, married in circumstances of great and lavish pomp a daughter of President Roosevelt, thus linking a large fortune, based upon vested interests, with the ruling executive of the day and strategetically combining wealth with direct political power. It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. We shall advert to some of the great fortunes in the West based wholly or largely upon city real estate. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. But once any man or woman passed over the line of respectability into the besmeared realm of sheer disrepute, and that person would find Longworth not only accessible but genuinely sympathetic. Maloney, Family Doctor", "ROBT. It is not merely business sections which the Rhinelander family owns, however ; they derive stupendous rentals from a vast number of tenement houses. The careers of Field, Leiter and several other Chicago multimillionaires ran in somewhat parallel grooves. The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. [16] His widow lived almost another 47 years until her death in 1988. This railroad was built in the proportion of twelve parts to one by public funds, raised by taxation of the people of that State, and by prodigal gifts of public land grants. In those frontier days, a horse represented one of the most valuable forms of property ; and, as under a system wherein human life was inconsequential compared to the preservation of property, the penalty for stealing a horse was usually death. As population increased and the downtown sections were converted into business sections, the fashionables shifted their quarters from time to time, always pushing uptown, until the Goelet lands became a long sweep of ostentatious mansions. Ogden Goelet was born on September 29, 1851 in Manhattan, New York . From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. It is not merely business sections which the Rhinelander family owns, however ; they derive stupendous rentals from a vast number of tenement houses. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. Peter P. Goelet was for several years one of the directors of the Bank of New York, and both brothers benefited by the corrupt control of the United States Bank, and were principals among the founders of the Chemical Bank. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. The next step is marriage with title. His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. There were certain other conventional respects in which he was woefully deficient, and he had certain singularities which severely taxed the comprehension of routine minds. This remarkable man lived to the age of eighty-one ; when he died in 1863 in a splendid mansion which he had built in the heart of his vineyard, his estate was valued at $15,000,000. The next step is marriage with title. Some other explanation must be found to account for the phenomenal increase of the original small fortune and its unshaken retention. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. As was the case with John Jacob Astor, the fortune of the Goelets was derived from a mixture of commerce, banking and ownership of land. [16] His widow was given his personal effects and property along with life use of their home on Narragansett Avenue in Newport and their estate in France. [27] Anne Marie was the daughter of Daniel Guestier, a director of the Orleans Railroad "who at one time was said to have been the wealthiest wine merchant of France and the owner of vast estates. The railroads now controlled by a few men, among whom the large landowners are conspicuous, were surveyed and built to a great extent by public funds, not private money. A few years later the remaining frontage along Fifth Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets went to the Goelet family, landowners whose substantial Manhattan holdings-fifty-five acres in all-derived from the two Goelet brothers who had inherited the land from the man whose two daughters they had wisely married. They're collectively worth $1.2 trillion. Two children survived each of the brothers. It also includes blocks upon blocks filled with residences and aristocratic mansions. [26], In 1958, in Goelet's honor, his widow and four children donated $500,000 toward the construction of the Metropolitan Opera's new home at Lincoln Center, where the grand staircase bears a plaque with his name. In 1860 he was made a partner. John Goelet, who married Henrietta Fanner, daughter of William Rogers Fanner, This page was last edited on 16 July 2021, at 15:31. The price they paid was $600 a lot. To give one of many instances : The Illinois Central Railroad, passing through an industrial and rich farming country, is one of the most profitable railroads in the United States. Napoleon had the same experience with French contractors, and the testimony of all wars is to the same effect. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. It seems quite superfluous to enlarge further upon the origin of the great landed fortunes of New York City ; the typical examples given doubtless serve as expositions of how, in various and similar ways, others were acquired. He was a member of the Jekyll Island Club on Jekyll Island, Georgia. The factors entering into the building up of the Schermerhorn fortune were almost identical with those of the Astor, the Goelet and the Rhinelander fortunes. Business Magnate. [12] He was a sportsman and the leader of the city's old-money social set. The result was that when their father died, they not only inherited a large business and a very considerable stretch of real estate, but, by means of their money and marriage, were powerful dignitaries in the directing of some of the richest and most despotic banks. Together, Anne Marie and Robert were the parents of four children: After several months of ill health, Goelet died on May 2, 1941 of a heart attack, aged 61, in his brownstone on Fifth Avenue at 48th Street. Posts about Goelet Family written by fileandclaw322. Its mate followed. His only sister, Beatrice Goelet, who died of pneumonia at age 17 in 1902, was painted as a child by John Singer Sargent. He foreclosed mortgages with pitiless promptitude, and his adroit knowledge of the law, approaching if not reaching, that of an unscrupulous pettifogger, enabled him to get the upper hand in every transaction. One was that almost consecutively they, along with other landholders, corrupted city governments to give them successive grants, and the other was their enormous surplus revenue which kept piling up. It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. With his wife, he built Ochre Court in Newport, Rhode Island, his son built Glenmere mansion, and his daughter, Mary Goelet, married Henry Innes-Ker, 8th Duke of Roxburghe . Some of the personnel of the firm changed several times : in 1865 Field, Leiter and Potter Palmer (who had also become a multimillionaire) associated under the firm name of Field, Leiter & Palmer. CHAPTER VIII The case looked black. His family is the majority owner of the Washington Nationals. According to. The stock of the Chemical Bank, quoted at a fabulous sum, so to speak, is still held by a small, compact group in which the Goelets are conspicuous. Little by little, scarcely known to the people, laws are altered ; the States and the Government, representing the interests of the vested class, surrender the peoples rights, often even the empty forms of those rights, and great railroad systems pass into the hands of a small cabal of multimillionaires. How great the wealth of this family is may be judged from the fact that one of the Rhinelanders William left an estate valued at $50,000,000 at his death in December, 1907. He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. Little research is necessary to shatter this error. THE GOELET FORTUNE. There were only a few millionaires in the United States, and still fewer multimillionaires. [10], Goelet, and his cousin Robert Wilson Goelet, both graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. [2] In his will, he left the Ritz-Carlton Hotel to Harvard University. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. The drunkard, the thief, the prostitute, the veriest wrecks of humanity could always tell their stories to him and get relief. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. Some of the personnel of the firm changed several times : in 1865 Field, Leiter and Potter Palmer (who had also become a multimillionaire) associated under the firm name of Field, Leiter & Palmer. But this, there is excellent reason to believe, is an absurdly low approximation. After proper periods of mourning, their widows May and Harriet resumed their regal lifestyles with open speculation as to the possibility of one or the other remarrying. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm. In the basement he had a forge, and there were tools of all kinds over which he labored, while upstairs he had a law library of 10,000 volumes, for it was a fixed, cynical determination of his never to pay a lawyer for advice that he could himself get for the reading. Another large tract of New York City real estate came into their possession through the marriage of William C. Rhinelander, of the third generation, to As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. These wielders of a fortune so great that they could not keep track of it, so fast did it grow, abandoned somewhat the rigid parsimony of the previous generations. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. We have seen how John Jacob Astor of the third generation very eagerly in 1867 invited Cornelius Vanderbilt to take over the management of the New York Central Railroad, after Vanderbilt had proved himself not less an able executive than an indefatigable and effective briber and corrupter. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. But Longworth somehow contrived to get the accused off with acquittal. This Rutgers was a lineal descendant of Anthony Rutgers, who, in 1731, obtained from the royal Governor Cosby the gift of what was then called the Fresh Water Pond and Swamp a stretch of seventy acres of little value at the time, but which is now covered with busy streets and large commercial and office buildings. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. These various factors were intertwined ; the profits from one line of property were used in buying up other forms and thus on, reversely and comminglingly. Thus, an entry, on January 26, 1807, in the municipal records, reads : On receiving the report of the Street Commissioner, Ordered that warrants issue to Messrs. Anderson and Allen for the three installments due to them from Mr. Goelet for the Whitehall and Exchange Piers.MSS. Mr. Goelet, who spent much of his life abroad, was a principal in two film-producing companies, Voyagers Inc. and Normandy Productions Inc. Sept. 28, 1923 - Oct. 08, 2019 October 17, 2019 Robert G. Goelet, a business and civic leader, naturalist, and philanthropist, who with his wife, Alexandra Creel Goelet, had been steward of. Robert and Ogden jointly controlled the family fortune of tens of millions of dollars and, beginning in the early 1880's, embarked on an ambitious construction campaign that included the 1883 . The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. His passion for economy was carried to such an abnormal stage that he refused even to engage a tailor to mend his garments.3 He was unmarried, and generally attended to his own wants. It also includes blocks upon blocks filled with residences and aristocratic mansions. It was estimated that the 266 acres of land, constituting what was owned by individuals and private corporations in one section alone the South Side, were worth $319,000,000. a daughter of John Rutgers. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. Another notable example of this glorifying was Nicholas Biddle, long president of the United States Bank. degree in 1902 and an M.A. No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. He foreclosed mortgages with pitiless promptitude, and his adroit knowledge of the law, approaching if not reaching, that of an unscrupulous pettifogger, enabled him to get the upper hand in every transaction. Another notable example of this glorifying was Nicholas Biddle, long president of the United States Bank. Chancing in upon him one could see him intently pouring over a list of his properties.
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