Robert, Ogden, Robert and Robert, Sorting out the Gilded Age Goelets Likewise the third generation. 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. 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. THE GOELET FORTUNE. Field was the son of a farmer. The founder, Peter Schermerhorn, was a ship chandler during the Revolution. 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 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. By 1830 the population was 24,831 ; twenty years later it had reached 118,761, and in 1860, 171,293 inhabitants. In 1952 Lerner borrowed $250 from his wife to start a real estate company, selling homes for developers. 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. 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.
Gustavus Myers, History of the Great American Fortunes, vol - Yamaguchy This land was once a farm and extended from about what is now Union Square to Forty-seventh street and Fifth avenue. 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. 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. His only sister, Beatrice Goelet, who died of pneumonia at age 17 in 1902, was painted as a child by John Singer Sargent. 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. 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. 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 . All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. 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. tracts at a time of distress. 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. CHAPTER VIII He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. 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. Little research is necessary to shatter this error. Formerly Broker", "WHITNEY WARREN, ARCHITECT, 78, DIES; Designer of the Grand Central Terminal and Rebuilding of Louvain Library, Belgium HAD PRACTICAL APPROACH Specialized With His Partner, C. D. Wetrnore. 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.
The Lost Robert Goelet Mansion - No. 591 5th Avenue For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. 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. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. The fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. 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.
New York Architecture Images- Chelsea-Goelet Building 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. There were only a few millionaires in the United States, and still fewer multimillionaires. 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. After a funeral service at St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. 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. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. 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 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. 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. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. In marrying the Duke of Roxburghe in 1903, May Goelet, the daughter of Ogden, was but following the example set by a large number of other American women of multi-millionaire families. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. Goelet family. But this, there is excellent reason to believe, is an absurdly low approximation. Chancing in upon him one could see him intently pouring over a list of his properties. As time passes a gradual transformation takes place.
Robert Wilson Goelet Jr. (1921-1989) - Find a Grave Memorial [36], Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, "ROBERT W. GOELET DIES IN HOME AT 61. Gina Gallo and her husband Jean-Charles Boisset. French spent the summer conceiving and designing Goelet's statue. 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. The foundations of the Goelet family fortune were established before the Revolutionary War. Corporation Director, Owner of Large Realty Holdings Here, Succumbs to Heart Attack. 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 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 drunkard, the thief, the prostitute, the veriest wrecks of humanity could always tell their stories to him and get relief. 2 Prominent Families of New York: 231. 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 arrangement becomes easy. 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. 8 Eighth Annual Report, Illinois Labor Bureau: 104-253.
Robert Goelet - Wikipedia 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. 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.
Peter P. Goulet (1764-1828) - HouseHistree 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 ! By October, he had cast a smaller plaster figure for Goelet, McKim, the Trustees, and the university's various committees to review. 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. 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. Of Peter Goelets business methods and personality no account is extant. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. Throughout the fall and the winter of 1900-1901, various university figures dropped by French's New York studio to judge the mock-up of Alma . What set of men do we find now in control of this railroad, doing with it as they please ? Likewise the third generation. 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. 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. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. 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.