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. His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop. 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. 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. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. At this time, Newport was a place where some of the most elite New York families resided during the summer months. 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. 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. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. The arrangement becomes easy. 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. Ogden Goelet was born on September 29, 1851 in Manhattan, New York . 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). The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. They also built ships and did a large commission business. 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. 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. 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. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. 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 fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. 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. 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. 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. W.GOELET MAY WED MLLE. 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. 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. He was the son of Elbert Samuel Kip (1799-1876) and Elizabeth ( ne Goelet) Kip (1808-1882). His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a . His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a promoter and backer of pirates and piracies, and as a briber of royal officials under British rule, we have dealt in previous chapters. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. 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. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. 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. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. 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. 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. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. But Longworth somehow contrived to get the accused off with acquittal. 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. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. 8 Eighth Annual Report, Illinois Labor Bureau: 104-253. [10], Goelet, and his cousin Robert Wilson Goelet, both graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. Kin Of Noted Architect. 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. No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. 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. Current Status: #59 on Forbes' s 2015 list. Some of the lots cost him but ten dollars each. The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. In later years, the family's main residence was at 591 Fifth Avenue in New York. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. 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. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. He was. 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. 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. [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. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. Napoleon had the same experience with French contractors, and the testimony of all wars is to the same effect. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. He was a director of the Bank of New York from 1814 until his death in 1852. [14], As of 2012, the Goelet's Newport estate at Narragansett Avenue and the corner of Ochre Point Avenue, remained in the Goelet family. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. [12] He was a sportsman and the leader of the city's old-money social set. Likewise the third generation. 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. But the singular continuity does not end here. The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. 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. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and told the beggar to try it on. John Jacob Astor is one of the directors of the Western Union Telegraph monopoly, with its annual receipts of $29,000,000 and its net profits of $8,000,000 yearly ; and as for the many other corporations in which he and his family, the Goelets and the other commanding landlords hold stock, they would, if enumerated, make a formidable list. He was 68 years old. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. 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. . 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. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. After proper periods of mourning, their widows May and Harriet resumed their regal lifestyles with open speculation as to the possibility of one or the other remarrying. 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 . As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. They're collectively worth $1.2 trillion. 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. Little research is necessary to shatter this error. Certainly he was a very unique type of millionaire, much akin to Stephen Girard. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. It also includes blocks upon blocks filled with residences and aristocratic mansions. His personal habits were considered repulsive by the conventional and fastidious. 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. The next step is marriage with title. [16] He also owned a fishing lodge on the Restigouche River, which separates New Brunswick from Quebec (which he left to his children). John Jacob Astor is one of the directors of the Western Union Telegraph monopoly, with its annual receipts of $29,000,000 and its net profits of $8,000,000 yearly ; and as for the many other corporations in which he and his family, the Goelets and the other commanding landlords hold stock, they would, if enumerated, make a formidable list. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. 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. 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. He was born in Conway, Mass., in 1835. This remarkable man lived to the age of eighty-one ; when he died in 1863 in a splendid mansion which he had built in the heart of his vineyard, his estate was valued at $15,000,000. The next step is marriage with title. 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. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. tracts at a time of distress. Along The engagement was later denied in October,[23] and Mary married the sculptor and polo player Charles Cary Rumsey in 1910.[24]. 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 Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. The case looked black. Peter had two sons ; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. The founder, Peter Schermerhorn, was a ship chandler during the Revolution. 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. 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. [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. 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. By 1830 the population was 24,831 ; twenty years later it had reached 118,761, and in 1860, 171,293 inhabitants. As time passes a gradual transformation takes place. Francis Goelet (19261998), a noted philanthropist and patron of the arts who died unmarried. The growth of the city kept on increasingly. 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. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. In 1952 Lerner borrowed $250 from his wife to start a real estate company, selling homes for developers. 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. 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. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. 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. Next to the Astors estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value. 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. 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. Peter P. Goelet was for several years one of the directors of the Bank of New York, and both brothers benefited by the corrupt control of the United States Bank, and were principals among the founders of the Chemical Bank. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. His grandfather, Jacobus Goelet, was, as a boy and young man, brought up by Frederick Phillips, with whose career as a . The Government and the public were forced to pay the highest sums for the poorest material. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. The enormities brazenly committed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 are sufficiently remembered. 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. 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 executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. THE GOELET FORTUNE. The Goelet family, originally hardware merchants, were socially prominent for generations and were at the top of the social ladder in Victorian New York. 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. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. [27] Anne Marie was the daughter of Daniel Guestier, a director of the Orleans Railroad "who at one time was said to have been the wealthiest wine merchant of France and the owner of vast estates. 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. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. 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. degree in 1902 and an M.A. 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. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. The careers of Field, Leiter and several other Chicago multimillionaires ran in somewhat parallel grooves. 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. 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 progenitor of this family, Peter Goelet (1727-1811), was an ironmonger during and after the Revolution. 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. Far from it. 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. 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 enormities brazenly committed during the Spanish-American War of 1898 are sufficiently remembered.
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