Father of Robert Goelet. The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. The principal landowner in this one section, not to mention other sections of that immense city, was Marshall Field, with $11,000,000 worth of land ; the next was Leiter, who owned in that section land valued at $10,500,000.8 It appeared from this report that eighteen persons owned $65,000,000 of this $319,000,000 worth of land, and that eighty-eight persons owned $136,000,000 worth or one-half of the entire business center of Chicago. 8 Eighth Annual Report, Illinois Labor Bureau: 104-253. Its mate followed. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm. 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. The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. 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. When twenty-one he went to Chicago and worked in a wholesale dry goods house. It fitted. This estimate did not include $8,000,000 worth of land which the executors reported that he owned in New York City, nor the millions of dollars of his land possessions elsewhere. He was born in Conway, Mass., in 1835. The variety of Fields possessions and his numerous forms of ownership were such that we shall have pertinent occasion to deal more relevantly with his career in subsequent parts of this work. 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. The rent-racked people of the City of New York, where rents are higher proportionately than in any other city, have sweated and labored and fiercely struggled, as have the people of other cities, only to deliver up a great share of their earnings to the lords of the soil, merely for a foothold. These brothers had set out with an iron determination to build up the largest fortune they could, and they allowed no obstacles to hinder them. degree in 1903. John Jacob Astor of the fourth generation repeats this performance in aligning himself, as does Goelet, with that masterhand Harriman, against whom the most specific charges of colossal looting have been brought.5 But it would be both idle and prejudicial in the highest degree to single out for condemnation a brace of capitalists for following out a line of action so strikingly characteristic of the entire capitalist class a class which, in the pursuit of profits, dismisses nicety of ethics and morals, and which ordains its own laws. From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. His personal habits were considered repulsive by the conventional and fastidious. The unsold land grant, says Professor Frank Parsons, amounted to 344,368 acres, worth probably over $5,000,000, so that those to whom the securities of the company were issued, had obtained the road at a bonus of nearly $2,000,000 above all they paid in.4. 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. [13], Goelet served as a director of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company for many years. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. He had a clear notion (for he was endowed with a highly analytical and penetrating mind) that in giving a few coins to the abased and the wretched he was merely returning in infinitesimal proportion what the prevailing system, of which he was so conspicuous an exemplar, took from the whole people for the benefit of a few ; and that this system was unceasingly turning out more and more wretches. For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away. The brothers admired Kendall's work-within four years he would design . Little research is necessary to shatter this error. Subsequently the firm became Field, Leiter & Co., and, finally in 1887, Marshall Field & Co.10 The firm conducted both a wholesale and retail business on what is called in commercial slang a cash basis: that is, it sold goods on immediate payment and not on credit. They had 4-children and their grandchildren included Elbridge T. Gerry, Ogden and Robert Goelet. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. Shortly after Robert married Henrietta (Harriet) Louise Warren in 1879, he commissioned architect Edward H. Kendall to design a Fifth Avenue mansion worthy of his social standing. 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 While the Astors, the Goelets, the Rhinelanders and others, or rather the entire number of inhabitants, were transmuting their land into vast and increasing wealth expressed in terms of hundreds of millions in money, Nicholas Longworth was aggrandizing himself likewise in Cincinnati. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. It is entirely needless to iterate the narrative of how the city officials corruptly gave over to these men land and water grants before that time municipally owned grants now having a present incalculable value.1. The careers of Field, Leiter and several other Chicago multimillionaires ran in somewhat parallel grooves. When Ogden Goelet died he left a fortune of at least $80,000,000, reckoning all of the complex forms of his property, and his brother, Robert, dying in 1899, left a fortune of about the same amount. Here the growth of large private fortunes was marked by much greater celerity than in the East, although these fortunes are not as large as those based upon land in the Eastern cities. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. 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. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. Graduate of Columbia and Its Law School, but Never Had Practiced. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. Subsequently the firm became Field, Leiter & Co., and, finally in 1887, Marshall Field & Co.10 The firm conducted both a wholesale and retail business on what is called in commercial slang a cash basis: that is, it sold goods on immediate payment and not on credit. 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. Two children survived each of the brothers. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm. The creation of GWE consolidates the original vision of founder John Goelet and the winemaking philosophy of co-founder Bernard Portet. Napoleon had the same experience with French contractors, and the testimony of all wars is to the same effect. Younger brother Ogden married Mary R. Wilson [Mary R. Goelet] in 1878 and had two children, Mary "May" Wilson Goelet [Mary W. Goelet] (1879?-1937) and Robert Goelet (1880-1966). Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and told the beggar to try it on. To understand the intense scandal caused by what were considered his vagaries, it is only necessary to bear in mind the ultra-lofty position of a multimillionaire at a period when a man worth $250,000 was thought very rich. 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. From Trinity Church they got a ninety-nine year lease of a large tract in what is now the very nub of the business section of New York City which tract they subsequently bought in fee simple. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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. [5][6] His maternal grandparents were George Henry Warren, a prominent lawyer, and Mary (ne Phoenix) Warren (herself the daughter of U.S. Representative Jonas P. Phoenix and granddaughter of Stephen Whitney). By October, he had cast a smaller plaster figure for Goelet, McKim, the Trustees, and the university's various committees to review. 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. [36], Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, "ROBERT W. GOELET DIES IN HOME AT 61. 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. 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. John Jacob Astor of the fourth generation repeats this performance in aligning himself, as does Goelet, with that masterhand Harriman, against whom the most specific charges of colossal looting have been brought.5 But it would be both idle and prejudicial in the highest degree to single out for condemnation a brace of capitalists for following out a line of action so strikingly characteristic of the entire capitalist class a class which, in the pursuit of profits, dismisses nicety of ethics and morals, and which ordains its own laws. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. Robert Walton Goelet, 61, of New York and Newport, R. I., a financier and one of New York's largest property owners, died today in his old brownstone house at 48th Street and Fifth Avenue, one of the few remaining private residences on the. For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. The rent-racked people of the City of New York, where rents are higher proportionately than in any other city, have sweated and labored and fiercely struggled, as have the people of other cities, only to deliver up a great share of their earnings to the lords of the soil, merely for a foothold. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. Corporation Director, Owner of Large Realty Holdings Here, Succumbs to Heart Attack. His family is the majority owner of the Washington Nationals. Peter the Younger quickly gravitated into the profitable and fashionable business of the day the banking business, with its succession of frauds, many of which have been described in the preceding chapters. [12] He was a sportsman and the leader of the city's old-money social set. 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. . And progressively their rentals from this land increased. There he studied law and was admitted to practice. The great impetus to the sudden increase of their fortune came in the period 1850-1870, through a tract of land which they owned in what had formerly been the outskirts of the city. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a promoter and backer of pirates and piracies, and as a briber of royal officials under British rule, we have dealt in previous chapters. The price they paid was $600 a lot. Goelet family 0-9 608 Fifth Avenue 900 Broadway C Clinton Roosevelt Clos Du Val Winery Peter T. Curtenius G Elbridge Thomas Gerry Peter G. Gerry Robert L. Gerry Jr. Robert Livingston Gerry Sr. Thomas Russell Gerry Glenmere mansion Alexandra Creel Goelet Mary Goelet Mary Wilson Goelet Ogden Goelet Peter Goelet Robert Goelet Robert Goelet Sr. Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and told the beggar to try it on. Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less. The same combination of economic influences and pressure which so vastly increased the value of the Astors land, operated to turn this quondam farm into city lots worth enormous sums. He had a clear notion (for he was endowed with a highly analytical and penetrating mind) that in giving a few coins to the abased and the wretched he was merely returning in infinitesimal proportion what the prevailing system, of which he was so conspicuous an exemplar, took from the whole people for the benefit of a few ; and that this system was unceasingly turning out more and more wretches. The founder, Peter Schermerhorn, was a ship chandler during the Revolution. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. The factors constituting this fortune are various. The value of the land that he beqeuathed has increased continuously ; in the hands of his various descendants to-day it is many times more valuable than the huge fortune which he left. Here the growth of large private fortunes was marked by much greater celerity than in the East, although these fortunes are not as large as those based upon land in the Eastern cities. The Goelet family, originally hardware merchants, were socially prominent for generations and were at the top of the social ladder in Victorian New York. It will be recalled that, as important personages in Tammany Hall, the dominant political party in New York City, the Rhinelanders used the powers of city government to get grant after grant for virtually nothing. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. Doubling the sums credited to Field and Leiter (that is to say, adding the value of the improvements to the value of the land), this brought Fields real estate in that one section to a value of $22,000,000, and Leiters to nearly the same. This estimate was confirmed to a surprising degree by the inventory of Fields executors reported to the court early in 1907. This extortion formed one of the saddest and most sordid chapters of the Civil War (as it does of all wars,) but conventional history is silent on the subject, and one is compelled to look elsewhere for the facts of how the commercial houses imposed at high prices shoddy material and semi-putrid food upon the very army and navy that fought for their interests.9 In the words of one of Fields laudatory biographers, the firm coined money a phrase which for the volumes of significant meaning embodied in it, is an epitome of the whole profit system. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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 . A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. 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. 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. Robert Walton Goelet (March 19, 1880 May 2, 1941) was a financier and real estate developer in New York City. By this manipulation, private individuals not only got this immensely valuable railroad for practically nothing, but they received, or rather the laws (which they caused to be made) awarded them, a present of nearly four millions for their dexterity in plundering the railroad from the people. 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 . But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. [3] His maternal uncles were stockbroker George Henry Warren II[7][8] and prominent architects Whitney Warren[9] and Lloyd Warren. This explanation is found partly in the fraudulent means by which, decade after decade, they secured land and water grants from venal city administrations, and in the singularly dubious arrangement by which they obtained an extremely large landed property, now having a value of tens upon tens of millions, from Trinity Church. The Goelet fortune was estimated to be around $50 million and it was principally maintained by brother Ogden and Robert Goelet. Their policy was much the same as that of the Astors constantly increasing their land possessions. The fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. Current Status: #59 on Forbes' s 2015 list. The enormities brazenly committed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 are sufficiently remembered. Thus, like the Astors and other rich landholders, partly by investments made in trade, and largely by fraud, the Goelets finally became not only great landlords but sharers in the centralized ownership of the countrys transportation systems and industries. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. With true aristocratic aspirations, they have not been satisfied with mere plebeian American mansions, gorgeous palaces though they be ; they set out to find a European palace with warranted royal associations, and found one in the famous castle of Schonberg, on the Rhine, near Oberwesel, which they bought and where they have ensconced themselves. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. It also includes blocks upon blocks filled with residences and aristocratic mansions. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. In a voluminous biography giving the genealogies of the rich families of New York material which was supplied and perhaps written by the families themselves this boast occurs in the chapter devoted to the Goelets : They were also numbered among the founders of that famous New York financial institution, the Chemical Bank.2 Thus do the crimes of one generation become transformed into the glories of another ! Goelet and his brother Robert controlled the family fortune, worth tens of millions. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. 10 So valuable was a partnership in this firm that a writer says that Field paid Leiter an unknown number of millions when he bought out Leiters interest. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. But the singular continuity does not end here. Another notable example of this glorifying was Nicholas Biddle, long president of the United States Bank. To understand the intense scandal caused by what were considered his vagaries, it is only necessary to bear in mind the ultra-lofty position of a multimillionaire at a period when a man worth $250,000 was thought very rich. Nearly a century and a half ago William and Frederick Rhinelander kept a bakeshop on William street, New York City, and during the Revolution operated a sugar factory. Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. On the other hand, they bought constantly. The grant consisted of what are now many blocks along Broadway north of Lispenard street. What the circumstances were that attended this grant are not now known. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. 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 his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. By this manipulation, private individuals not only got this immensely valuable railroad for practically nothing, but they received, or rather the laws (which they caused to be made) awarded them, a present of nearly four millions for their dexterity in plundering the railroad from the people. Indeed, so rapidly did its value grow soon after he got it, that it was no longer necessary for him to practice law or in any wise crook to others. The Goelet family is an influential family from New York, of Huguenot origins, that owned significant real estate in New York City . The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. The titled descendants of the predatory barons of the feudal ages having, generation after generation, squandered and mortgaged the estates gotten centuries ago by force and robbery, stand in need of funds. As immigration swarmed West and Cincinnati grew, his land consequently took on enhanced value. 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. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. But the singular continuity does not end here. The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. The variety of Fields possessions and his numerous forms of ownership were such that we shall have pertinent occasion to deal more relevantly with his career in subsequent parts of this work. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. [2], In 1908, he purchased the 10,000 acres (4,000ha) Sandricourt estate, the former residence of the Marquis de Beauvoir, on the outskirts of Paris. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. a daughter of John Rutgers. 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. [3], His paternal grandparents were Sarah (ne Ogden) Goelet and Robert Goelet, one of the founders of the Chemical Bank and Trust Company (later known as JPMorgan Chase). The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. The arrangement becomes easy. He also had the most expensive pasture in the world and the last cow to ever graze on Broadway (north of Union Square). The Goelets were three brothers descended from Peter Goelet, an ultra-wealthy 19th century ironmonger who used profits from the Revolutionary War to buy up Manhattan real estate. in Railroad Structures, Hotels, Offices", "Sleep-Walk Plunge Kills Lloyd Warren; Famous Architect Falls From His Sixth-Floor Apartment in Early Morning. They're collectively worth $1.2 trillion. Although the State of Illinois formally retains a nominal say in its management, yet it is really owned and ruled by eight men, among whom are John Jacob Astor, and Robert Walton Goelet, associated with E.H. Harriman, Cornelius Vanderbilt and four others. 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. There is good reason to believe that alongside of his one personality, that of a rapacious miser, there lived another personality, that of a philosopher. As fast as millions are dissipated they are far more than replaced in these private coffers by the collective labor of the American people through the tributary media of rent, interest and profit. In exchange, Longworth received thirty-three acres of what was then considered unpromising land in the town.6 From time to time he bought more land with the money made in law ; this land lay on what were then the outskirts of the place. Yet this miser, who denied himself many of the ordinary comforts and conveniences of life, and who would argue and haggle for hours over a trivial sum, allowed himself one expensive indulgence expensive for hint, at least. There he studied law and was admitted to practice. Center", "R. GOELET BUYS A CHATEAU; Pays $300,000 for Sandricourt -- May Be for His Mother", "GOELET WILL GIVES 'RITZ' TO HARVARD; Hotel and Its Site, Taxed on $3,675,000, Go to the University Unrestricted", "IN THE REAL ESTATE FIELD; Robert W. Goelet Buys Lexington Avenue Corner -- Deal for Eleventh Street Building -- Park Avenue Purchase", "NATIONAL BISCUIT LEASES SIX FLOORS; Will Move Offices From the Chelsea District to New Space on Park Avenue", "BANK LEASES SPACE; Chemical Corn to Have Unit at 425 Park Avenue", "Norman Foster's 425 Park Avenue Officially Tops Out 897 Feet Atop Midtown East, Manhattan", "RUMSEY CHILDREN TO SHARE ESTATE; Daughter of E.H. Harriman Set Up Trust for Dr. W.J.M.A. 1 Some of this land and these water grants and piers were obtained by Peter Goelet during the corrupt administration of City Controller Romaine. He is the developer of the Cond Nast Building as well as One World Trade Center, or the "Freedom Tower," the tallest structure in the Western hemisphere. The second generation of the Goelets counting from the founder of the fortune were incorrigibly parsimonious. This was his grim way of striking back at a commercial society whose lies and shams and hypocrisies he hated ; he knew them all ; he had practiced them himself. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. The founding and aggrandizement of other great private fortunes from land were accompanied by methods closely resembling, or identical with, those that the Astors employed. 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. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a promoter and backer of pirates and piracies, and as a briber of royal officials under British rule, we have dealt in previous chapters. The man so the story further runs had no money to pay Longworths fee and no property except two second-hand copper stills. [16], He inherited vast real estate holdings in New York, sometimes known as the Goelet Realty Company, which included the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the property between 52nd and 53rd Streets on Park Avenue which the Racquet and Tennis Club leased. Longworth had been born in Newark, N.J., in 1782, and at the age of twenty-one had migrated to Cincinnati, then a mere outpost, with a population of eight hundred sundry adventurers. Parts of his land and other possessions he bought with the profits from his business ; other portions, as has been brought out, he obtained from corrupt city administrations. The engagement was later denied in October,[23] and Mary married the sculptor and polo player Charles Cary Rumsey in 1910.[24]. There is good reason to believe that alongside of his one personality, that of a rapacious miser, there lived another personality, that of a philosopher.