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 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 is the developer of the Cond Nast Building as well as One World Trade Center, or the "Freedom Tower," the tallest structure in the Western hemisphere. Field was the son of a farmer. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. 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. In the early 1880s, they constructed such buildings in Manhattan as the Gorham Building, the Judge Building, The Goelet Building, and the Metropolitan Club. 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 1902 and an M.A. 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. On the other hand, they bought constantly. 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. The growth of the city kept on increasingly. 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 was a director of the Bank of New York from 1814 until his death in 1852. The arrangement becomes easy. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop. 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. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. 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. 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. 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 Goelet family, originally hardware merchants, were socially prominent for generations and were at the top of the social ladder in Victorian New York. 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 . 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 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. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. 8 Eighth Annual Report, Illinois Labor Bureau: 104-253. The Goelet fortune was estimated to be around $50 million and it was principally maintained by brother Ogden and Robert Goelet. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. This estimate was confirmed to a surprising degree by the inventory of Fields executors reported to the court early in 1907. [21][22], In 1909, Goelet was reportedly engaged to Mary Harriman, daughter of railroad executive E. H. Harriman. He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. Graduate of Columbia and Its Law School, but Never Had Practiced. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. For respectability in any form he had no use ; he scouted and scoffed at it and pulverized it with biting and grinding sarcasm. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. 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. 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. Field was the son of a farmer. Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. [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. Land acquired by political or commercial fraud has been made the lever for the commission of other frauds. The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. 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. 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. 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. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. The progenitor of this family, Peter Goelet (1727-1811), was an ironmonger during and after the Revolution. 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. [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. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. [17] He also owned sixteen four-story townhouses on Park Avenue built by his father in 1871. This land was once a farm and extended from about what is now Union Square to Forty-seventh street and Fifth avenue. See Goelet family: Robert Walton Goelet (March 19, 1880 - May 2, 1941) was a financier and real estate developer in New York City. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. During the Civil War this firm, as did the entire commercial world, proceeded to hold up the nation for exorbitant prices in its con- 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 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. Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. The Government and the public were forced to pay the highest sums for the poorest material. 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. Chancing in upon him one could see him intently pouring over a list of his properties. But this, there is excellent reason to believe, is an absurdly low approximation. [36], Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company, The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, "ROBERT W. GOELET DIES IN HOME AT 61. The largest landowners that developed in Chicago were Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. It also includes blocks upon blocks filled with residences and aristocratic mansions. He was dry and caustic in his remarks, says Houghton, and very rarely spared the object of his satire. There he studied law and was admitted to practice. 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. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. [13], Goelet served as a director of the Metropolitan Opera and Real Estate Company for many years. Longworth had been born in Newark, N.J., in 1782, and at the age of twenty-one had migrated to Cincinnati, then a mere outpost, with a population of eight hundred sundry adventurers. 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. Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and told the beggar to try it on. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. Sportsman, a Leader in Social Circles in Newport and New York, Kin of Early Settlers", "MISS BEATRICE GOELET DEAD. 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. [3] His maternal uncles were stockbroker George Henry Warren II[7][8] and prominent architects Whitney Warren[9] and Lloyd Warren. Far from it. In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. Their policy was much the same as that of the Astors constantly increasing their land possessions. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. 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. The foundations of the Goelet family fortune were established before the Revolutionary War. But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. He was a director of the Bank of New York from 1814 until his death in 1852. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. 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. What set of men do we find now in control of this railroad, doing with it as they please ? By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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. 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. He was the largest landowner in Cincinnati, and one of the largest in the cities of the United States. 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 death of brothers Ogden and Robert Goelet near the end of the nineteenth century left vast multi-million estates for their heirs, which in both their cases consisted of a widow, a teen-aged son, and daughter. 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. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. 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. [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. 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. 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. Likewise the third generation. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Now he owns millions of. 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 grant consisted of what are now many blocks along Broadway north of Lispenard street. 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 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. 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. In 1860 he was made a partner. But the singular continuity does not end here. As immigration swarmed West and Cincinnati grew, his land consequently took on enhanced value. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. The next step is marriage with title. 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. In 1860 he was made a partner. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. Peter had two sons ; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. 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. Another large tract of New York City real estate came into their possession through the marriage of William C. Rhinelander, of the third generation, to 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. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. Its mate followed. None who had the appearance of respectable charity seekers could get anything else from him than contemptuous rebuffs. In 1819 he gave up law, and thenceforth gave his entire attention to managing his property. The fortunes of the brothers descended to Roberts two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. 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. 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. 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. The man so the story further runs had no money to pay Longworths fee and no property except two second-hand copper stills. 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). Suicide Theory Discarded. 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. Another notable example of this glorifying was Nicholas Biddle, long president of the United States Bank. For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. 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 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. His only sister, Beatrice Goelet, who died of pneumonia at age 17 in 1902, was painted as a child by John Singer Sargent. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. The brothers admired Kendall's work-within four years he would design . tracts at a time of distress. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. Ogden Goelet (June 11, 1851 New York City - August 27, 1897 Cowes, Isle of Wight) was an American heir, businessman and yachtsman from New York City during the Gilded Age. The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. Formerly Broker", "WHITNEY WARREN, ARCHITECT, 78, DIES; Designer of the Grand Central Terminal and Rebuilding of Louvain Library, Belgium HAD PRACTICAL APPROACH Specialized With His Partner, C. D. Wetrnore. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. 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. It is now covered with stores, buildings and densely populated tenement houses. Next to the Astors estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value. 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. The next step is marriage with title. CHAPTER VIII But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. Likewise the third generation. The drunkard, the thief, the prostitute, the veriest wrecks of humanity could always tell their stories to him and get relief. Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. Business Magnate. 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). He was. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. His family is the majority owner of the Washington Nationals. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. 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. 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. 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. In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk ; he often milked it himself. 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. 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. And progressively their rentals from this land increased. 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. 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. Upon the death of their father Robert R. Goelet (1809-1879) and their bachelor uncle Peter (c.1800-1879), they inherited holdings throughout Manhattan. 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. Napoleon had the same experience with French contractors, and the testimony of all wars is to the same effect. a daughter of John Rutgers. None who had the appearance of respectable charity seekers could get anything else from him than contemptuous rebuffs. 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. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. 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. 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. 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. 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. There were only a few millionaires in the United States, and still fewer multimillionaires. LittlefieldLiterary Landscapes of Newport8 May 2018Marriage and Society During the Gilded Age During the Gilded Age, marriage was heavily influenced by societal and familial power. 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. We shall advert to some of the great fortunes in the West based wholly or largely upon city real estate. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. When twenty-one he went to Chicago and worked in a wholesale dry goods house. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses.
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