And progressively their rentals from this land increased. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. What set of men do we find now in control of this railroad, doing with it as they please ? 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. But this, there is excellent reason to believe, is an absurdly low approximation. 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. This they could easily do for two reasons. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. 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. 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. He was a member of socially prominent New York family. John Goelet, who married Henrietta Fanner, daughter of William Rogers Fanner, This page was last edited on 16 July 2021, at 15:31. Then after the beggar left, Longworth sent a boy to the nearest shoe store, with instructions to get a pair of shoes, but in no circumstances to pay more than a dollar and a half. Field left a fortune of about $100,000,000 (as estimated by the executors) which he bequeathed principally to two grandsons, both of which heirs were in boyhood. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. 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. He Inherited $60,000,000. On the other hand, the feminine possessors of American millions, aided and abetted doubtless by the men of the family, who generally crave a blooded connection, lust for the superior social status insured by a title. For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. 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. 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. 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. These stills Longworth took and traded them off to Joel Williams, a tavern-keeper who was setting up a distillery. It is now covered with stores, buildings and densely populated tenement houses. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. Corporation Director, Owner of Large Realty Holdings Here, Succumbs to Heart Attack. On the other hand, they bought constantly. So long as Vanderbilt produced the profits, Astor and his fellow-directors did not care what means he used, however criminal in law and whatever their turpitude in morals. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. These two sons, with an eye for the advantageous, married daughters of Thomas Buchanan, a rich Scotch merchant of New York City, and for a time a director of the United States Bank. 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 ! 1 Some of this land and these water grants and piers were obtained by Peter Goelet during the corrupt administration of City Controller Romaine. Gina Gallo and her husband Jean-Charles Boisset. 2 Prominent Families of New York: 231. These stills Longworth took and traded them off to Joel Williams, a tavern-keeper who was setting up a distillery. The engagement was later denied in October,[23] and Mary married the sculptor and polo player Charles Cary Rumsey in 1910.[24]. They allowed themselves a glittering effusion of luxuries which were popularly considered extravagances but which were in nowise so, inasmuch as the cost of them did not represent a tithe of merely the interest on the principal. 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. Profits from trade went toward buying more land, and in providing part of corrupt funds with which the Legislature of New York was bribed into granting banking charters, exemptions and other special laws. 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. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a . Of Peter Goelets business methods and personality no account is extant. In imitation of the Astors the Goelets steadily adhered, as they have since, to the policy of seldom or never selling any of their land. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less. Then was witnessed that characteristic so symptomatic of the American money aristocracy. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. Likewise the third generation. The founder, Peter Schermerhorn, was a ship chandler during the Revolution. 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. The fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. This estimate was made at a time when the country was slowly recovering, as the set phrase goes, from the panic of 1892-94, and when land values were not in a state of inflation or rise. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm. Another notable example of this glorifying was Nicholas Biddle, long president of the United States Bank. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. 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 family was descended from Peter Goelet, a wealthy New York merchant in the 18th century. The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. 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 There he studied law and was admitted to practice. 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. 2 Prominent Families of New York: 231. Maloney, Family Doctor", "ROBT. The Goelet fortune was estimated to be around $50 million and it was principally maintained by brother Ogden and Robert Goelet. Upon the death of their father Robert R. Goelet (1809-1879) and their bachelor uncle Peter (c.1800-1879), they inherited holdings throughout Manhattan. 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. Robert Walton Goelet (March 19, 1880 May 2, 1941) was a financier and real estate developer in New York City. But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. 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. 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 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. [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. This estimate was confirmed to a surprising degree by the inventory of Fields executors reported to the court early in 1907. But the singular continuity does not end here. 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. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. RELATIVES HERE NOT TOLD Rich Bachelor Spends Much of His Time at His Sandricourt Estate in France", "Anne-Marie Goelet, Legion of Honor Officer", "ROBERT W. GOELET WEDS MLLE. He died in 1879 aged seventy-nine years ; and within a few months, his brother Robert, who was as much of an eccentric and miser in his way, passed away in his seventieth year. 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. 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. The foundations of the Goelet family fortune were established before the Revolutionary War. He was the son of Elbert Samuel Kip (1799-1876) and Elizabeth ( ne Goelet) Kip (1808-1882). The growth of the city kept on increasingly. He was born in Conway, Mass., in 1835. [16] He also owned a fishing lodge on the Restigouche River, which separates New Brunswick from Quebec (which he left to his children). 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. He was. In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. Its mate followed. Goelet was a man who not only outlived William B. Astor, A.T. Stuart, and Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, but who was once the wealthiest bachelor in New York State. Current Status: #59 on Forbes' s 2015 list. 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. [13], Goelet served as a director of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company for many years. The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. Commissioned by New York real estate magnate Ogden Goelet as his family's summer residence, Ochre Court (1888-1892) was designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. GUESTIER; Rich New Yorker Married to Daughter of Bordeaux Landowner by a Civil Ceremony", "TROTH ANNOUNCED OFF MISS FANNER; She Will Be Married to John Goelet, Who Was Graduated From Harvard in '53", "Paid Notice: Deaths MANICE, BEATRICE GOELET", "BEATRICE GOELET, H. F. MANICE MARRY; Daughter of Late Robert W. Goelet Married to Former Lieutenant in the Navy", "Goelet, Robert G. (Robert Guestier), 1924- - Biodiversity Heritage Library", "Goelet, Robert G. (Robert Guestier), 1924-", "Chemical Bank & Trust Chooses a New Director", "Francis Goelet, Philanthropist And Music Lover, 72, Is Dead", "Robert Walton Goelet's 'Southside' Estate, Newport, RI: Robert Yarnall Richie Photograph Collection", DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Robert Walton Goelet's 'Southside' Estate, Newport, RI, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Walton_Goelet&oldid=1033905769. 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. This large fortune, as is that of the Astors and of other extensive landlords, is not, as has been pointed out, purely one of land possessions. 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. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. He was a director of the Bank of New York from 1814 until his death in 1852. 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. The grant consisted of what are now many blocks along Broadway north of Lispenard street. 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 founding and aggrandizement of other great private fortunes from land were accompanied by methods closely resembling, or identical with, those that the Astors employed. 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. The Goelet family is an influential family from New York, of Huguenot origins, that owned significant real estate in New York City . 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. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. The Government and the public were forced to pay the highest sums for the poorest material. The invariable rule, it might be said, has been to utilize the surplus revenues in the form of rents, in buying up controlling power in a great number and variety of corporations. [11], Upon the death of his mother in 1915, he inherited a fortune estimated to be $40 million (equivalent to $780million in 2021),[2] which included 591 Fifth Avenue (a brownstone built in 1880 by Edward H. Kendall at the southeast corner of 48th Street) and her estate at Ochre Point in Newport, Rhode Island, designed by Stanford White and built between 1882 and 1884 and known as "Southside". 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. 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. History [ edit] The Goelets are descended from a family of Huguenots from La Rochelle in France, who escaped to Amsterdam. The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. 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. This large fortune, as is that of the Astors and of other extensive landlords, is not, as has been pointed out, purely one of land possessions. 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. Yet now that this bank is one of the richest and most powerful institutions in the United States, and especially as the criminal nature of its origin is unknown except to the historic delver, the Goelets mention the connection of their ancestors with it as a matter of great and just pride. 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 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. They also built ships and did a large commission business. 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. At first the fringe of New York City, then part of its suburbs, this tract lay in a region which from 1850 on began to take on great values, and which was in great demand for the homes of the rich. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. Long after Longworth had become a multimillionaire he took a savage, perhaps a malicious, delight in doing things which shocked all current conceptions of how a millionaire should act. There were only a few millionaires in the United States, and still fewer multimillionaires. 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 is good reason to believe that alongside of his one personality, that of a rapacious miser, there lived another personality, that of a philosopher. 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. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. Far from it. He died in 1879 aged seventy-nine years ; and within a few months, his brother Robert, who was as much of an eccentric and miser in his way, passed away in his seventieth year. 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. 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. [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. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. [17] He also owned sixteen four-story townhouses on Park Avenue built by his father in 1871. The price they paid was $600 a lot. The grant consisted of what are now many blocks along Broadway north of Lispenard street. 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. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. 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. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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. Ogden Goelet was born on September 29, 1851 in Manhattan, New York . When William B. Astor inherited in 1846 the greater part of his fathers fortune, the Goelet brothers had attained what was then the exalted rank of being millionaires, although their fortune was only a fraction of that of Astor. These two brothers not only maintained the family fortune but also were one of the wealthiest landowners in New York City (second only to the Astors). The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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. 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. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. [21][22], In 1909, Goelet was reportedly engaged to Mary Harriman, daughter of railroad executive E. H. Harriman. Ogden was a noted real estate investor with properties throughout Manhattan. One tract of land, extending from Third avenue to the East River and from Sixty-fourth to Seventy-fifth street, which he secured in the early part of the nineteenth century, became worth a colossal fortune in itself. W.GOELET MAY WED MLLE. But Longworth somehow contrived to get the accused off with acquittal. But this, there is excellent reason to believe, is an absurdly low approximation. 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. 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. His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. Their policy was much the same as that of the Astors constantly increasing their land possessions. Graduate of Columbia and Its Law School, but Never Had Practiced. 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. The amount of $319,000,000 was calculated as being solely the value of the land, not counting improvements, which were valued at as much more. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. The factors constituting this fortune are various. 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. They also built ships and did a large commission business. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. Brothers Robert Goelet (1841-1899) and Ogden Goelet (1846-1897) were the scions of a wealthy New York family that had made vast investments in real estate over several generations. Cincinnati, with its population of 325,902,7 pays incessant tribute in the form of a vast rent roll to the scions of the man whose main occupation was to hold on to the land he had got for almost nothing. 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. The basic structure of this was New York City land, but a considerable part was in railroad stocks and bonds, and miscellaneous aggregations of other securities to the purchase of which the surplus revenue had gone. [1], Robert Walton Goelet, nicknamed Bertie to avoid confusion with his cousin Robert Wilson Goelet (whom he strongly resembled),[2] was born on March 19, 1880 in New York. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. Some other explanation must be found to account for the phenomenal increase of the original small fortune and its unshaken retention. For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. But Longworth somehow contrived to get the accused off with acquittal. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. 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. 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.

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