goelet family fortune

When his widow died in 1848 her fortune was estimated at $250,000. 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. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. Peter had two sons ; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. 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. The case looked black. As population increased and the downtown sections were converted into business sections, the fashionables shifted their quarters from time to time, always pushing uptown, until the Goelet lands became a long sweep of ostentatious mansions. 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. 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. John Jacob Astor of the fourth generation repeats this performance in aligning himself, as does Goelet, with that masterhand Harriman, against whom the most specific charges of colossal looting have been brought.5 But it would be both idle and prejudicial in the highest degree to single out for condemnation a brace of capitalists for following out a line of action so strikingly characteristic of the entire capitalist class a class which, in the pursuit of profits, dismisses nicety of ethics and morals, and which ordains its own laws. He 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. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. 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 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 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. Two children survived each of the brothers. This estimate was confirmed to a surprising degree by the inventory of Fields executors reported to the court early in 1907. 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. Another notable example of this glorifying was Nicholas Biddle, long president of the United States Bank. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. 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. 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. Built in the Beaux-Arts style, Goelet spent an estimated $4.5 million on the estate between 1888 and 1892. 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. 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 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. In this podcast series we dive into the long and shadowy history of America's ruling elite through the works of authors who were either silenced, suppressed, or forgotten, to discover the origins of the 1% and from where their power and wealth was, and still is, extracted. 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. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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. 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. Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a . The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. The 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 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. Together, Anne Marie and Robert were the parents of four children: After several months of ill health, Goelet died on May 2, 1941 of a heart attack, aged 61, in his brownstone on Fifth Avenue at 48th Street. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. Goelet and his brother Robert controlled the family fortune, worth tens of millions. 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. At this time, Newport was a place where some of the most elite New York families resided during the summer months. Their policy was much the same as that of the Astors constantly increasing their land possessions. 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. 1 Some of this land and these water grants and piers were obtained by Peter Goelet during the corrupt administration of City Controller Romaine. Of Peter Goelets business methods and personality no account is extant. 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. The growth of the city kept on increasingly. 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. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. 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. In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and told the beggar to try it on. The Goelet family is much less known than the Astors, but their fortune and the fact that there were only few heirs in each generation, put them in the rank of America's first families in terms of wealth. 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. Little research is necessary to shatter this error. After a funeral service at St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. 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. [12] He was a sportsman and the leader of the city's old-money social set. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. This land was once a farm and extended from about what is now Union Square to Forty-seventh street and Fifth avenue. 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 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. 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. Goelet family. [13], Goelet served as a director of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company for many years. 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 second generation of the Goelets counting from the founder of the fortune were incorrigibly parsimonious. 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. 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. 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 Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. THE GOELET FORTUNE. The drunkard, the thief, the prostitute, the veriest wrecks of humanity could always tell their stories to him and get relief. Its mate followed. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. [1] Francois Goelet, a widower with a ten-year-old son, Jacobus, arrived in New York in 1676. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. As population increased and the downtown sections were converted into business sections, the fashionables shifted their quarters from time to time, always pushing uptown, until the Goelet lands became a long sweep of ostentatious mansions. 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 great fire of 1871 destroyed the firms buildings, but they were replaced. 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. 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. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. [20] It too was torn down and replaced by a new tower at 425 Park designed by architect Lord Norman Foster, still on land owned by the Goelet family. 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. 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. 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. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. 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 founder, Peter Schermerhorn, was a ship chandler during the Revolution. None who had the appearance of respectable charity seekers could get anything else from him than contemptuous rebuffs. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm. Some of the lots cost him but ten dollars each. 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. 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. CHAPTER VIII In exchange, Longworth received thirty-three acres of what was then considered unpromising land in the town.6 From time to time he bought more land with the money made in law ; this land lay on what were then the outskirts of the place. 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. He was 68 years old. 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. [16] His widow lived almost another 47 years until her death in 1988. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. Some other explanation must be found to account for the phenomenal increase of the original small fortune and its unshaken retention. 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 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. 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. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. 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. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. tracts at a time of distress. 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. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. 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. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. [2] In his will, he left the Ritz-Carlton Hotel to Harvard University. In the early 1880s, they constructed such buildings in Manhattan as the Gorham Building, the Judge Building, The Goelet Building, and the Metropolitan Club. As immigration swarmed West and Cincinnati grew, his land consequently took on enhanced value. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. degree in 1902 and an M.A. 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. Its mate followed. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. Mr. Goelet, who spent much of his life abroad, was a principal in two film-producing companies, Voyagers Inc. and Normandy Productions Inc. 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. 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. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. 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. This bank, as we have brought out previously, was chartered after a sufficient number of members of the Legislature had been bribed with $50,000 in stock and a large sum of money. Upon the death of their father Robert R. Goelet (1809-1879) and their bachelor uncle Peter (c.1800-1879), they inherited holdings throughout Manhattan. 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.

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