When William B. Astor inherited in 1846 the greater part of his father's 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 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. This land was once a farm and extended from about what is now Union Square to Forty-seventh street and Fifth avenue. It embraced a long section of Broadway—a section now covered with huge hotels, business buildings, stores and theaters. It also includes blocks upon blocks filled with residences and aristocratic mansions. 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. By 1879 it was a central part of the city and brought high rentals. 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. 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.
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. On the other hand, they bought constantly. On one occasion they bought eighty lots in the block from Fifth to Sixth avenues, Forty-second to Forty-third streets. The price they paid was $600 a lot. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less.
MISERS WITH MILLIONS.
The second generation of the Goelets—counting from the founder of the fortune—were incorrigibly parsimonious. They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. Likewise the third generation. Of Peter Goelet, a grandson of the original Peter, many stories were current illustrating his close-fistedness. His passion for economy was carried to such an abnormal stage that he refused even to engage a tailor to mend his garments.[164] He was unmarried, and generally attended to his own wants. On several occasions he was found in his office at the Chemical Bank industriously absorbed in sewing his coat. For stationery he used blank backs of letters and envelopes which he carefully and systematically saved and put away. His house at Nineteenth street, corner of Broadway, was a curiosity shop. 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.
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 him, at least. He was a lover of fancy fowls and of animals. Storks, pheasants and peacocks could be seen in the grounds about his house, and also numbers of guinea pigs. In his stable he kept a cow to supply him with fresh milk; he often milked it himself.
This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. Chancing in upon him one could see him intently pouring over a list of his properties. He never tired of doing this, and was petulantly impatient when houses enough were not added to his inventory.
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.
THE THIRD GENERATION.
The fortunes of the brothers descended to Robert's two sons, Robert, born in 1841, and Ogden, born in 1846. 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. 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. 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. Between them, he and his brother Ogden possessed a fortune of at least $150,000,000. 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. 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 country's transportation systems and industries.
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. Two children survived each of the brothers. Then was witnessed that characteristic so symptomatic of the American money aristocracy. A surfeit of money brings power, but it does not carry with it a recognized position among a titled aristocracy. The next step is marriage with title. 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. 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. The arrangement becomes easy. 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 multimillionaire families. It is an indulgence which, however great the superficial consequential money cost may be, is, in reality, inexpensive. 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. 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.