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. 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. 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. 1 Some of this land and these water grants and piers were obtained by Peter Goelet during the corrupt administration of City Controller Romaine. 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. Two children survived each of the brothers. John Goelet, who married Henrietta Fanner, daughter of William Rogers Fanner, This page was last edited on 16 July 2021, at 15:31. These stills Longworth took and traded them off to Joel Williams, a tavern-keeper who was setting up a distillery. 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. 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. 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. The factors constituting this fortune are various. 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. [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. Robert Walton Goelet (March 19, 1880 May 2, 1941) was a financier and real estate developer in New York City. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. 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. 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. 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. Of Peter Goelets business methods and personality no account is extant. 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. 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). 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. Business Magnate. For a Western city this was a very considerable population for the period. 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). 5 See Part III, Great Fortunes From Railroads.. Field was the son of a farmer. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. 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. Of this amount all that private individuals contributed was $4,930 a mile above their receipts ; these latter were sums which the private owners gathered in from selling the land given to them by the State, amounting to $35,211 per mile, and the sums that they pocketed from stock waterings amounting to $8,189 a mile. 4 The Railways, the Trusts and the People: 104. "[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. Maloney, Family Doctor", "ROBT. It fitted. But the singular continuity does not end here. Francis Goelet (19261998), a noted philanthropist and patron of the arts who died unmarried. Along From the frauds of this bank the Goelets reaped large profits which systematically were invested in New York City real estate. 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. [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. Upon the death of his mother in 1915, he inherited a fortune estimated to be $40 million (equivalent to $780 million in 2021), . 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 . 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. 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. 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 Goelet fortune was estimated to be around $50 million and it was principally maintained by brother Ogden and Robert Goelet. Their policy was much the same as that of the Astors constantly increasing their land possessions. The factors constituting this fortune are various. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. The Rhinelanders, also, employ their great surplus revenues in constantly buying more land. Chancing in upon him one could see him intently pouring over a list of his properties. 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. 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 ! 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. No term of reproach was more invested with cutting contempt and cruel hatred than that of a horse thief. 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 Chicago, with its phenomenally speedy growth of population and its vast array of workers, immense fortunes were amassed within an astonishingly short period. See Goelet family: Robert Walton Goelet (March 19, 1880 - May 2, 1941) was a financier and real estate developer in New York City. 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. Sept. 28, 1923 - Oct. 08, 2019 October 17, 2019 Robert G. Goelet, a business and civic leader, naturalist, and philanthropist, who with his wife, Alexandra Creel Goelet, had been steward of. The Goelet family, originally hardware merchants, were socially prominent for generations and were at the top of the social ladder in Victorian New York. The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. 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. 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. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. 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 balance represents the investments of private individuals. The creation of GWE consolidates the original vision of founder John Goelet and the winemaking philosophy of co-founder Bernard Portet. It is not merely business sections which the Rhinelander family owns, however ; they derive stupendous rentals from a vast number of tenement houses. 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. [3], His paternal grandparents were Sarah (ne Ogden) Goelet and Robert Goelet, one of the founders of the Chemical Bank and Trust Company (later known as JPMorgan Chase). Between them, he and his brother Ogden possessed a fortune of at least $150,000,000. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. Now Forbes has compiled the first comprehensive ranking of the richest families in America: 185 dynasties with fortunes of at least $1 billion. [17] He also owned sixteen four-story townhouses on Park Avenue built by his father in 1871. 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.