Hally Williams Cooper Alan, Articles G

No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. 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. The man so the story further runs had no money to pay Longworths fee and no property except two second-hand copper stills. Peter had two sons ; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. 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. They also built ships and did a large commission business. Upon the death of their father Robert R. Goelet (1809-1879) and their bachelor uncle Peter (c.1800-1879), they inherited holdings throughout Manhattan. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. 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. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. 8 Eighth Annual Report, Illinois Labor Bureau: 104-253. 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. Certainly he was a very unique type of millionaire, much akin to Stephen Girard. 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. a daughter of John Rutgers. 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. 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. 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. 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 constituting this fortune are various. 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. History [ edit] The Goelets are descended from a family of Huguenots from La Rochelle in France, who escaped to Amsterdam. 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. 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. 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. 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 was conserved by producing relatively few heirs and . The great fire of 1871 destroyed the firms buildings, but they were replaced. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. 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 family was descended from Peter Goelet, a wealthy New York merchant in the 18th century. According to. The enormities brazenly committed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 are sufficiently remembered. 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. 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. 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. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. It is now covered with stores, buildings and densely populated tenement houses. 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. Some of the lots cost him but ten dollars each. [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. Graduate of Columbia and Its Law School, but Never Had Practiced. 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. The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. 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. On the other hand, they bought constantly. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. This estimate was confirmed to a surprising degree by the inventory of Fields executors reported to the court early in 1907. The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. Next to the Astors estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value. The creation of GWE consolidates the original vision of founder John Goelet and the winemaking philosophy of co-founder Bernard Portet. His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop. 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. The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. 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. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. Francis Goelet (19261998), a noted philanthropist and patron of the arts who died unmarried. 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. 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. Many are. The case looked black. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. The same combination of economic influences and pressure which so vastly increased the value of the Astors land, operated to turn this quondam farm into city lots worth enormous sums. 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. Sportsman, a Leader in Social Circles in Newport and New York, Kin of Early Settlers", "MISS BEATRICE GOELET DEAD. 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. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. [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. 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. What set of men do we find now in control of this railroad, doing with it as they please ? [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. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. 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 Goelet family is an influential family from New York, of Huguenot origins, that owned significant real estate in New York City . 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. From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. 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. None who had the appearance of respectable charity seekers could get anything else from him than contemptuous rebuffs. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. a daughter of John Rutgers. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. Now Forbes has compiled the first comprehensive ranking of the richest families in America: 185 dynasties with fortunes of at least $1 billion. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. 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. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. 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. 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. Business Magnate. The factors constituting this fortune are various. 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 ! It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. 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. 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. 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. [21][22], In 1909, Goelet was reportedly engaged to Mary Harriman, daughter of railroad executive E. H. Harriman. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. [16] His widow was given his personal effects and property along with life use of their home on Narragansett Avenue in Newport and their estate in France. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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 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. Gina Gallo and her husband Jean-Charles Boisset. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. 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. These stills Longworth took and traded them off to Joel Williams, a tavern-keeper who was setting up a distillery. 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. It grew exponentially during the nineteenth century, swollen by Manhattan real estate, and expanded through wise investments (including the family's role in the founding of Chemical Bank). No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. He was a member of socially prominent New York family. His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop. French spent the summer conceiving and designing Goelet's statue. Goelet family. 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. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. The Government and the public were forced to pay the highest sums for the poorest material. His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. Chancing in upon him one could see him intently pouring over a list of his properties. 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. 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. These various factors were intertwined ; the profits from one line of property were used in buying up other forms and thus on, reversely and comminglingly. [12] He was a sportsman and the leader of the city's old-money social set. After a funeral service at St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. But this, there is excellent reason to believe, is an absurdly low approximation. Net worth: $10.7 billion Source of wealth: E & J Gallo Winery The Gallo family fortune is. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. 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. 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. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. What the circumstances were that attended this grant are not now known. 2 Prominent Families of New York: 231. Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. 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. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. He was born in Conway, Mass., in 1835. At this time, Newport was a place where some of the most elite New York families resided during the summer months. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. Field was the son of a farmer. 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 landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. [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. 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. Madison StanleyDr. THE GOELET FORTUNE. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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. As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. Father of Robert Goelet. Victim Had Suffered From Somnambulism. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. The next step is marriage with title. 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. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm.