THE GOELET FORTUNE. The foundations of the Goelet family fortune were established before the Revolutionary War. 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. Between them, he and his brother Ogden possessed a fortune of at least $150,000,000. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. 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. 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. The grant consisted of what are now many blocks along Broadway north of Lispenard street. We have seen how John Jacob Astor of the third generation very eagerly in 1867 invited Cornelius Vanderbilt to take over the management of the New York Central Railroad, after Vanderbilt had proved himself not less an able executive than an indefatigable and effective briber and corrupter. degree in 1903. Ogden Goelet was born on September 29, 1851 in Manhattan, New York . 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. 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. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. 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. 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. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. 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. 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. [16] His widow lived almost another 47 years until her death in 1988. 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. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. Francis Goelet (19261998), a noted philanthropist and patron of the arts who died unmarried. This land was once a farm and extended from about what is now Union Square to Forty-seventh street and Fifth avenue. In later years, the family's main residence was at 591 Fifth Avenue in New York. [15] The estate, where he spent much of his time, which he purchased for $300,000, had 139 buildings, grain fields and herds of cattle. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. What set of men do we find now in control of this railroad, doing with it as they please ? Of Peter Goelets business methods and personality no account is extant. 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 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. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. 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. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. 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. 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. Built in the Beaux-Arts style, Goelet spent an estimated $4.5 million on the estate between 1888 and 1892. 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. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. They also built ships and did a large commission business. 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 . It fitted. His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less. Now he owns millions of. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. Peter had two sons ; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. This land was once a farm and extended from about what is now Union Square to Forty-seventh street and Fifth avenue. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. Then was witnessed that characteristic so symptomatic of the American money aristocracy. The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. In the early 1880s, they constructed such buildings in Manhattan as the Gorham Building, the Judge Building, The Goelet Building, and the Metropolitan Club. GUESTIER; New York Financier's Troth to Daughter of Bordeaux Land Owner Reported in Paris. CHAPTER VIII Goelet and his brother Robert controlled the family fortune, worth tens of millions. 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. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. The great fire of 1871 destroyed the firms buildings, but they were replaced. 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. [10], Goelet, and his cousin Robert Wilson Goelet, both graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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 founding and aggrandizement of other great private fortunes from land were accompanied by methods closely resembling, or identical with, those that the Astors employed. 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. 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. He was. 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. 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. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. 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. 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. 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. The brothers admired Kendall's work-within four years he would design . 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. Certainly he was a very unique type of millionaire, much akin to Stephen Girard. 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. In 1860 he was made a partner. 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. It fitted. The arrangement becomes easy. [1] Francois Goelet, a widower with a ten-year-old son, Jacobus, arrived in New York in 1676. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away. His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop. 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. Current Status: #59 on Forbes' s 2015 list. 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. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. 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. At this time, Newport was a place where some of the most elite New York families resided during the summer months. Now Forbes has compiled the first comprehensive ranking of the richest families in America: 185 dynasties with fortunes of at least $1 billion. These stills Longworth took and traded them off to Joel Williams, a tavern-keeper who was setting up a distillery. He was a member of socially prominent New York family. 8 Eighth Annual Report, Illinois Labor Bureau: 104-253. 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. 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. Its mate followed. 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. 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. CHAPTER VIII In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. 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 price they paid was $600 a lot. 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. 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. 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. This they could easily do for two reasons. Robert Goelet Jr., a motion picture producer and heir to a fortune, died of a heart attack June 28 at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. The enormities brazenly committed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 are sufficiently remembered. 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. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. 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. 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 ! [14], As of 2012, the Goelet's Newport estate at Narragansett Avenue and the corner of Ochre Point Avenue, remained in the Goelet family. 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. There he studied law and was admitted to practice. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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 . Kin Of Noted Architect. The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. Some of the lots cost him but ten dollars each. The man so the story further runs had no money to pay Longworths fee and no property except two second-hand copper stills. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. Net worth: $10.7 billion Source of wealth: E & J Gallo Winery The Gallo family fortune is. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. 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. 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 largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. 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. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. degree in 1902 and an M.A. 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. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. 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. Gina Gallo and her husband Jean-Charles Boisset. In the last ten years the value of the Goelet land holdings has enormously increased, until now it is almost too conservative an estimate to place the collective fortune at $200,000,000. But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. 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 an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. 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 next step is marriage with title. 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. His two sons continued the business of ship chandlers ; one of them Peter the Younger was especially active in extending his real estate possessions, both by corrupt favors of the city officials and by purchase. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. 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. It is now covered with stores, buildings and densely populated tenement houses. [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. [21][22], In 1909, Goelet was reportedly engaged to Mary Harriman, daughter of railroad executive E. H. Harriman. On the other hand, they bought constantly. The Goelet family, originally hardware merchants, were socially prominent for generations and were at the top of the social ladder in Victorian New York. 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. Mr. Goelet, who spent much of his life abroad, was a principal in two film-producing companies, Voyagers Inc. and Normandy Productions Inc. It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. 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. We have seen how John Jacob Astor of the third generation very eagerly in 1867 invited Cornelius Vanderbilt to take over the management of the New York Central Railroad, after Vanderbilt had proved himself not less an able executive than an indefatigable and effective briber and corrupter. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. These also were high in the appraisement of property values, for they could be used to make whisky, and whisky could be in turn used to debauch the Indian tribes and swindle them of furs and land. 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. He was born in Conway, Mass., in 1835. The growth of the city kept on increasingly. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. 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. 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. The case looked black. 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. It is not merely business sections which the Rhinelander family owns, however ; they derive stupendous rentals from a vast number of tenement houses. By 1830 the population was 24,831 ; twenty years later it had reached 118,761, and in 1860, 171,293 inhabitants. 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. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. [26], In 1958, in Goelet's honor, his widow and four children donated $500,000 toward the construction of the Metropolitan Opera's new home at Lincoln Center, where the grand staircase bears a plaque with his name. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. We shall advert to some of the great fortunes in the West based wholly or largely upon city real estate. His uncle, Ogden Goelet, was the builder of Ochre Court and his two first cousins were Robert Wilson Goelet, the original owner of Glenmere mansion,[4] and Mary Goelet, the wife of Henry Innes-Ker, 8th Duke of Roxburghe. The fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. 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. 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. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. The founder, Peter Schermerhorn, was a ship chandler during the Revolution. 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. 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. Some other explanation must be found to account for the phenomenal increase of the original small fortune and its unshaken retention. 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. in Railroad Structures, Hotels, Offices", "Sleep-Walk Plunge Kills Lloyd Warren; Famous Architect Falls From His Sixth-Floor Apartment in Early Morning. 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. 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. The great fire of 1871 destroyed the firms buildings, but they were replaced. For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. Outstanding Business Executive Was One of Largest Property Owners in New York City", "OPERA STAIRCASE TO HONOR GOELET; Family Donates $500,000 for Metropolitan House at Lincoln Sq. Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. His personal habits were considered repulsive by the conventional and fastidious. They also built ships and did a large commission business. 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.