His wealth is vastnot less than five or six millions, wrote Barrett in 1862The Old Merchants of New York City, I: 349. He was one of the largest property owners in the city by the time of his death. 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. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. 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 factors constituting this fortune are various. 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. Of Peter Goelets business methods and personality no account is extant. 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. 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. Longworth ranked next to John Jacob Astor. The Goelet family, originally hardware merchants, were socially prominent for generations and were at the top of the social ladder in Victorian New York. By 1830 the population was 24,831 ; twenty years later it had reached 118,761, and in 1860, 171,293 inhabitants. Its mate followed. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. Yet the court records show that, after a career of bribery, he stole $400,000 of that banks funds. Father of Robert Goelet. 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. 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. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. In turn these rents have incessantly gone toward buying up railroads, factories, utility plants and always more and more land. 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. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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. The unsold land grant, says Professor Frank Parsons, amounted to 344,368 acres, worth probably over $5,000,000, so that those to whom the securities of the company were issued, had obtained the road at a bonus of nearly $2,000,000 above all they paid in.4. 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. All available accounts agree in describing him as merciless. Since the full and itemized details of these transactions have been elaborated upon in previous chapters, it is hardly necessary to repeat them. 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. Some of the lots cost him but ten dollars each. The balance represents the investments of private individuals. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. An extensive vineyard, which he laid out in Ohio, added to his wealth. The Astors are directors in a large array of corporations, and likewise virtually all of the other big landlords. And while on this phase, we should not overlook another salient fact which thrusts itself out for notice. 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. Nearly a century and a half ago William and Frederick Rhinelander kept a bakeshop on William street, New York City, and during the Revolution operated a sugar factory. 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 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. 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. On one occasion a beggar called at Longworths office and pointed eloquently at his gaping shoes. The progenitor of this family, Peter Goelet (1727-1811), was an ironmonger during and after the Revolution. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution. 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. He was a member of socially prominent New York family. 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 . 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. When fraud was necessary they, like the bulk of their class, unhesitatingly used it. Subsequently the firm became Field, Leiter & Co., and, finally in 1887, Marshall Field & Co.10 The firm conducted both a wholesale and retail business on what is called in commercial slang a cash basis: that is, it sold goods on immediate payment and not on credit. a daughter of John Rutgers. The wealth of the Rhinelander family is commonly placed at about $100,000,000. Longworth kicked off one of his own untied shoes and told the beggar to try it on. 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. It embraced a long section of Broadway a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. His only sister, Beatrice Goelet, who died of pneumonia at age 17 in 1902, was painted as a child by John Singer Sargent. The founder, Peter Schermerhorn, was a ship chandler during the Revolution. The unsold land grant, says Professor Frank Parsons, amounted to 344,368 acres, worth probably over $5,000,000, so that those to whom the securities of the company were issued, had obtained the road at a bonus of nearly $2,000,000 above all they paid in.4. 2 Prominent Families of New York: 231. Between them, he and his brother Ogden possessed a fortune of at least $150,000,000. 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). 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. 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. 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 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 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. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less. 8 Eighth Annual Report, Illinois Labor Bureau: 104-253. 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 was a member of the Jekyll Island Club on Jekyll Island, Georgia. It also includes blocks upon blocks filled with residences and aristocratic mansions. The Goelet fortune was estimated to be around $50 million and it was principally maintained by brother Ogden and Robert Goelet. It was established that Government officials were in collusion with the contractors. 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. 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. 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. During the Civil War this firm, as did the entire commercial world, proceeded to hold up the nation for exorbitant prices in its con- Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. [19] The 32-story building was open in 1957 with National Biscuit Company,[18] Kaye Scholer, Chemical Corn Exchange Bank as major tenants. Next to the Astors estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value.
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