Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. After a funeral service at St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. "[28] She received the French Legion of Honor for aiding French-American wives during World War II and for providing medical services to inhabitants in the vicinity of Sandricourt, the Goelet family estate outside Paris, after it was liberated in August 1944. 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. Their policy was much the same as that of the Astors constantly increasing their land possessions. RELATIVES HERE NOT TOLD Rich Bachelor Spends Much of His Time at His Sandricourt Estate in France", "Anne-Marie Goelet, Legion of Honor Officer", "ROBERT W. GOELET WEDS MLLE. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. 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 Goelet family is an influential family from New York, of Huguenot origins, that owned significant real estate in New York City . The grant consisted of what are now many blocks along Broadway north of Lispenard street. OTHER LAND FORTUNES CONSIDERED. With his wife, he built Ochre Court in Newport, Rhode Island, his son built Glenmere mansion, and his daughter, Mary Goelet, married Henry Innes-Ker, 8th Duke of Roxburghe. From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. 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. The family was descended from Peter Goelet, a wealthy New York merchant in the 18th century. 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 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. 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. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. The growth of the city kept on increasingly. 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. 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 The price they paid was $600 a lot. The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. 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. Certainly he was a very unique type of millionaire, much akin to Stephen Girard. 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. It fitted. 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 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 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. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory. 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. 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. For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. 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. But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity. In Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. The same process of reaping gigantic fortunes from land went on in every large city. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. The executors of Fields will placed the value of his real estate in Chicago at $30,000,000. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. degree in 1903. 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. In 1860 he was made a partner. These also were high in the appraisement of property values, for they could be used to make whisky, and whisky could be in turn used to debauch the Indian tribes and swindle them of furs and land. The 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 factors entering into the building up of the Schermerhorn fortune were almost identical with those of the Astor, the Goelet and the Rhinelander fortunes. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. Created BeauxArts Institute", "Death Claims Robert Goelet Financier, 61. 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. Yet now that this bank is one of the richest and most powerful institutions in the United States, and especially as the criminal nature of its origin is unknown except to the historic delver, the Goelets mention the connection of their ancestors with it as a matter of great and just pride. We shall advert to some of the great fortunes in the West based wholly or largely upon city real estate. A Battle over Frogs", "DUCHESS INHERITS FORTUNE; Former Miss Goelet Receives $3,000,000 From Mother's Estate", "George H. Warren A Founder of Concern That Once Owned Metropolitan Opera's Home, Dies at 87. The cost of the road as reported by the company in 1873 was $48,331 a mile. Little research is necessary to shatter this error. 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. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. 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. How great the wealth of this family is may be judged from the fact that one of the Rhinelanders William left an estate valued at $50,000,000 at his death in December, 1907. [16] Among his other New York holdings were the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, 14 Sutton Place South, 1400 Broadway, 53 Broadway, and the building on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 37th Street (which he bought in 1909). It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more 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. 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. 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. 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. No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. These stills Longworth took and traded them off to Joel Williams, a tavern-keeper who was setting up a distillery. 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. They also built ships and did a large commission business. 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. 3 At this very time his wealth, judged by the standard of the times, was prodigious. 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 great fire of 1871 destroyed the firms buildings, but they were replaced. 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. Next to the Astors estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value. He was the son of Elbert Samuel Kip (1799-1876) and Elizabeth ( ne Goelet) Kip (1808-1882). 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. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. Along Here he cultivated the Catawba grape and produced about 150,000 bottles a year. From Trinity Church they got a ninety-nine year lease of a large tract in what is now the very nub of the business section of New York City which tract they subsequently bought in fee simple. None who had the appearance of respectable charity seekers could get anything else from him than contemptuous rebuffs. Peter had two sons ; Peter P., and Robert R. Goelet. During the Civil War this firm, as did the entire commercial world, proceeded to hold up the nation for exorbitant prices in its con- 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. It is usually set forth, in the plenitude of eulogistic biographies, that their thrift and ability were the foundation of the familys immense fortune. It fitted. He was 68 years old. 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. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. [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. The story of how Longworth became a landowner is given by Houghton as follows : His first client was a man accused of horse stealing. It is not merely business sections which the Rhinelander family owns, however ; they derive stupendous rentals from a vast number of tenement houses. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. Ogden Goelet was an American heir, businessman and yachtsman from New York City during the Gilded Age. 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. 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. 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 founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. That they conducted their business in the accepted methods of the day and exercised great astuteness and frugality, is true enough, but so did a host of other merchants whose descendants are even now living in poverty. It is now covered with stores, buildings and densely populated tenement houses. What set of men do we find now in control of this railroad, doing with it as they please ? The great fire of 1871 destroyed the firms buildings, but they were replaced. 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. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. This land was once a farm and extended from about what is now Union Square to Forty-seventh street and Fifth avenue. John Goelet, who married Henrietta Fanner, daughter of William Rogers Fanner, This page was last edited on 16 July 2021, at 15:31. But the singular continuity does not end here. 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. None who had the appearance of respectable charity seekers could get anything else from him than contemptuous rebuffs. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. 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. In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year ; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. His only sister, Beatrice Goelet, who died of pneumonia at age 17 in 1902, was painted as a child by John Singer Sargent. It was through this property that the Goelet family accumulated their vast real estate empire in Manhattan, second only to the Astors. 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. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less. Kin Of Noted Architect. 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. 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. He Inherited $60,000,000. Mr. Goelet, who spent much of his life abroad, was a principal in two film-producing companies, Voyagers Inc. and Normandy Productions Inc.