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Goelet family. Many are. What the circumstances were that attended this grant are not now known. He was the son of Elbert Samuel Kip (1799-1876) and Elizabeth ( ne Goelet) Kip (1808-1882). . He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. [16] Among his other New York holdings were the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, 14 Sutton Place South, 1400 Broadway, 53 Broadway, and the building on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 37th Street (which he bought in 1909). 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. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. 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 brothers admired Kendall's work-within four years he would design . 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. The family was descended from Peter Goelet, a wealthy New York merchant in the 18th century. 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 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. 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. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. 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. 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. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. At least $55,000,000 of it was represented at the time that the executors made their inventory, by a multitude of bonds and stocks in a wide range of diverse industrial, transportation, utility and mining corporations. Robert G. Goelet, a civic leader, naturalist and philanthropist whose marriage merged two families that date to 17th-century New Amsterdam and made the couple stewards of Gardiners Island, a. 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. 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. From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. 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. The enormities brazenly committed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 are sufficiently remembered. [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). In that day, although but thirty years since, when none but the dazzlingly rich could afford to keep a sumptuous steam yacht in commission the year round, Robert Goelet had a costly yacht, 300 feet long, equipped with all the splendors and comforts which up to that time had been devised for ocean craft. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. The creation of GWE consolidates the original vision of founder John Goelet and the winemaking philosophy of co-founder Bernard Portet. 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 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. 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. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. His land lay in the very center of the expanding city, in the busiest part of the business section and in the best portion of the residential districts. That they conducted their business in the accepted methods of the day and exercised great astuteness and frugality, is true enough, but so did a host of other merchants whose descendants are even now living in poverty. 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. 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. This estimate was confirmed to a surprising degree by the inventory of Fields executors reported to the court early in 1907. In the course of this work it has already been shown in specific detail how Peter Goelet in conjunction with John Jacob Astor, the Rhinelander brothers, the Schermerhorns, the Lorillards and other founders of multimillionaire dynasties, fraudulently secured great tracts of land, during the early and middle parts of the last century, in either what was then, or what is now, in the heart of New York City. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. The foundations of the Goelet family fortune were established before the Revolutionary War. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. 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. In 1895 the Illinois Labor Bureau, in that year happening to be under the direction of able and conscientious officials, made a painstaking investigation of land values in Chicago. The case looked black. For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. 9 In those parts of this work relating to great fortunes from railroads and from industries, this phase of commercial life is specifically dealt with. 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. There he studied law and was admitted to practice. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. THE GOELET FORTUNE. 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. 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 second generation of the Goelets counting from the founder of the fortune were incorrigibly parsimonious. 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. 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. Sportsman, a Leader in Social Circles in Newport and New York, Kin of Early Settlers", "MISS BEATRICE GOELET DEAD. The factors constituting this fortune are various. [16], After Goelet's death in 1941, his estate leased the land on which the sixteen townhouses were built, which were torn down and replaced by 425 Park Avenue,[18] which, at the time of the construction, it was one of the tallest buildings that utilized the bolted connections. It fitted. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a . Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. 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. 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. There were only a few millionaires in the United States, and still fewer multimillionaires. [17] He also owned sixteen four-story townhouses on Park Avenue built by his father in 1871. 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. The growth of the city kept on increasingly. 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. "[28] She received the French Legion of Honor for aiding French-American wives during World War II and for providing medical services to inhabitants in the vicinity of Sandricourt, the Goelet family estate outside Paris, after it was liberated in August 1944. Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. 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). In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. 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. French spent the summer conceiving and designing Goelet's statue. That they conducted their business in the accepted methods of the day and exercised great astuteness and frugality, is true enough, but so did a host of other merchants whose descendants are even now living in poverty. 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. 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. 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. In getting their charter for the notorious Chemical Bank, they bribed members of the Legislature with the same phlegmatic serenity that they would put through an ordinary business transaction. 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. 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. 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. 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. As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. 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. 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. They're collectively worth $1.2 trillion. 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. 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. [14], As of 2012, the Goelet's Newport estate at Narragansett Avenue and the corner of Ochre Point Avenue, remained in the Goelet family. This they could easily do for two reasons. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. The Goelet family, originally hardware merchants, were socially prominent for generations and were at the top of the social ladder in Victorian New York. 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. Of this amount all that private individuals contributed was $4,930 a mile above their receipts ; these latter were sums which the private owners gathered in from selling the land given to them by the State, amounting to $35,211 per mile, and the sums that they pocketed from stock waterings amounting to $8,189 a mile. 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. 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. 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 great fire of 1871 destroyed the firms buildings, but they were replaced. He was the only son born to Henrietta Louise (ne Warren) Goelet and Robert Goelet (18411899), a prominent landlord in New York. 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. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. Madison StanleyDr. He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. 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. When his widow died in 1848 her fortune was estimated at $250,000. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. 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 is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. [21][22], In 1909, Goelet was reportedly engaged to Mary Harriman, daughter of railroad executive E. H. Harriman. He was 68 years old. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. 2 Prominent Families of New York: 231. He was a member of socially prominent New York family. The Goelet family is an influential family from New York, of Huguenot origins, that owned significant real estate in New York City . 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 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. His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. Far from it. The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. John Goelet, who married Henrietta Fanner, daughter of William Rogers Fanner, This page was last edited on 16 July 2021, at 15:31. 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. 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. 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 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. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. Chancing in upon him one could see him intently pouring over a list of his properties. The careers of Field, Leiter and several other Chicago multimillionaires ran in somewhat parallel grooves.
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