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. 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 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. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. The progenitor of this family, Peter Goelet (1727-1811), was an ironmonger during and after the Revolution. 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. 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. Far from it. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. These two brothers not only maintained the family fortune but also were one of the wealthiest landowners in New York City (second only to the Astors). 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 fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. Mr. Goelet, who spent much of his life abroad, was a principal in two film-producing companies, Voyagers Inc. and Normandy Productions Inc. 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. CHAPTER VIII The careers of Field, Leiter and several other Chicago multimillionaires ran in somewhat parallel grooves. This they could easily do for two reasons. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. He was the son of Elbert Samuel Kip (1799-1876) and Elizabeth ( ne Goelet) Kip (1808-1882). The growth of the city kept on increasingly. Father of Robert Goelet. As immigration swarmed West and Cincinnati grew, his land consequently took on enhanced value. With true aristocratic aspirations, they have not been satisfied with mere plebeian American mansions, gorgeous palaces though they be ; they set out to find a European palace with warranted royal associations, and found one in the famous castle of Schonberg, on the Rhine, near Oberwesel, which they bought and where they have ensconced themselves. THE GOELET FORTUNE. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. It is not merely business sections which the Rhinelander family owns, however ; they derive stupendous rentals from a vast number of tenement houses. 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. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. This they could easily do for two reasons. [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. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. Some of the lots cost him but ten dollars each. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. 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. 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. 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. After a funeral service at St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. They had 4-children and their grandchildren included Elbridge T. Gerry, Ogden and Robert Goelet. 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. He was the only son born to Henrietta Louise (ne Warren) Goelet and Robert Goelet (18411899), a prominent landlord in New York. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. 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 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. 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. 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. When Ogden Goelet died he left a fortune of at least $80,000,000, reckoning all of the complex forms of his property, and his brother, Robert, dying in 1899, left a fortune of about the same amount. 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. Then was witnessed that characteristic so symptomatic of the American money aristocracy. Goelet was a man who not only outlived William B. Astor, A.T. Stuart, and Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt, but who was once the wealthiest bachelor in New York State. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. 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. 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 wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. 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. His only sister, Beatrice Goelet, who died of pneumonia at age 17 in 1902, was painted as a child by John Singer Sargent. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. Likewise the third generation. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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. [16] He also owned a fishing lodge on the Restigouche River, which separates New Brunswick from Quebec (which he left to his children). 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. 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. It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. 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 GOELET FORTUNE. The price they paid was $600 a lot. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. 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. 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. He was plain and careless in his dress, looking more a beggar than a millionaire.. He was a director of the Bank of New York from 1814 until his death in 1852. degree in 1903. Goelet family 0-9 608 Fifth Avenue 900 Broadway C Clinton Roosevelt Clos Du Val Winery Peter T. Curtenius G Elbridge Thomas Gerry Peter G. Gerry Robert L. Gerry Jr. Robert Livingston Gerry Sr. Thomas Russell Gerry Glenmere mansion Alexandra Creel Goelet Mary Goelet Mary Wilson Goelet Ogden Goelet Peter Goelet Robert Goelet Robert Goelet Sr. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. 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. 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. 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. As immigration swarmed West and Cincinnati grew, his land consequently took on enhanced value. 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. The variety of Fields possessions and his numerous forms of ownership were such that we shall have pertinent occasion to deal more relevantly with his career in subsequent parts of this work. a daughter of John Rutgers. 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. [2], In 1908, he purchased the 10,000 acres (4,000ha) Sandricourt estate, the former residence of the Marquis de Beauvoir, on the outskirts of Paris. The grant consisted of what are now many blocks along Broadway north of Lispenard street. [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. Gina Gallo and her husband Jean-Charles Boisset. French spent the summer conceiving and designing Goelet's statue. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. Robert Walton Goelet (March 19, 1880 May 2, 1941) was a financier and real estate developer in New York City. 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 factors entering into the building up of the Schermerhorn fortune were almost identical with those of the Astor, the Goelet and the Rhinelander fortunes. 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. Its mate followed. 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. Younger brother Ogden married Mary R. Wilson [Mary R. Goelet] in 1878 and had two children, Mary "May" Wilson Goelet [Mary W. Goelet] (1879?-1937) and Robert Goelet (1880-1966). Ogden was a noted real estate investor with properties throughout Manhattan. 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. 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. The arrangement becomes easy. 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. 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. 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. 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. In 1860 he was made a partner. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. 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. [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. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. Graduate of Columbia and Its Law School, but Never Had Practiced. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. 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. 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.