This arrangement gave us sixteen complete blocks with sixty-four corners, a most unusual percentage.
There were a number of fortuitous circumstances which helped to make for success. James Gordon Bennett having large possessions in that neighbourhood, directed that our sale receive generous attention in the Herald. There had been a secession of some of the auctioneers from the Real Estate Exchange, which then occupied its own building at No. 65 Liberty Street. Their manager called and said that their Board of Directors were ready to do almost anything that I would ask to secure the sale. They allowed me to display in the salesroom during all of May a sign 60 feet wide and 20 feet in height, and they also agreed that they would permit no other sale on May 26th.
We had numerous conferences, and none of my associates agreed with me that it was possible to sell so many lots at one session, but I was absolutely firm and insisted that it be tried. I conceded that I would stop the auction if I found that the purchasers had been exhausted, or that the lots were being sold at a loss. Thousands of people visited the property on the preceding Saturdays and Sundays. We could have sold the property on the 26th of May without having made our final payment, and could have used the proceeds of the sale for that purpose, but to avoid any possible question as to whether we had taken title or not, we closed the title on the day before the sale. As we were about leaving Morton, Bliss & Company’s offices, both Bliss and Morton expressed the wish that we might have a great success the next day, and the genial Vice-President of the United States added: “If there is anything I can do, please call upon me.” In response, I asked him whether he would come over to the auction-room and if necessary, to convince the public of our authority to sell the property, whether he would make a statement from the auctioneer’s stand. He consented to do so and waited at his office until I notified him that there was no need of his remaining any longer.
When the auction started, the entire floor as well as the auction stands and gallery were crowded to capacity. The bidding was very lively, and when some of the One Hundred and Eighty-first Street corner lots sold for over $10,000, there was considerable applause.
The auction lasted until seven o’clock, and every one of the 411 lots was sold. Ex-Register John Reilly had paid the highest prices: he bought the entire front on the west side of St. Nicholas Avenue from One Hundred and Eightieth to One Hundred and Eighty-first streets, and he afterward confided to me that he had succeeded where we failed in finding out that the Subway was to go through St. Nicholas Avenue, and that there was to be a station at One Hundred and Eighty-first Street. The corners of One Hundred and Eighty-first Street and St. Nicholas Avenue are to-day the most valuable on Washington Heights.
Our syndicate was well satisfied with the result, as we divided a profit of $480,000 amongst the men who had invested $300,000. They showed their appreciation of my work by presenting me with a magnificent silver service, which was greatly admired by my Turkish visitors in Constantinople.
I was quite carried away with my success, and my enthusiasm made me an easy prey to the temptation of participating in a still larger scheme—the development of the Town of Bridgeport, Alabama. A few years prior to 1891 there had been a great boom in Birmingham and Anniston, so that I was easily persuaded by the firm that had been associated with me in the purchase of the Astor Block to go in with them to develop Bridgeport.
All of us in the North felt that the South was “coming back” and Bridgeport was near coal and iron fields and had good water power. We started development, stove- and iron-pipe companies, a hotel, and a bank. We believed, with energetic New Yorkers back of it, this little town on the Tennessee River could be made a great manufacturing centre; we all forgot that it was very far from Broadway. Before I knew it, I had sunk more than my Washington Heights profit, and I am still paying taxes on some of the land that I bought at that time.
The loss of that money was a wholesome lesson, and I resolved to stick to New York. I broke this resolve on only one other occasion, and that was my venture into the Bamberger-Delaware gold mine: we took out plenty of gold—something like $600,000 a year, but it cost us more than that to do so. That investment also proved a total loss.
In the winter of 1891 we began an operation which was to result in winning the record for rapid construction up to that date. Our tenants in the Hoagland property at Fifteenth Street and Sixth Avenue failed. We concluded to tear down the old buildings and erect a new one. We had been negotiating unsuccessfully with Baumann, the furniture dealer, so we planned with our architect to put up a four-story building. I was in the architect’s office the latter part of January, when in walked Mr. Baumann and told me that if I would guarantee to finish the building by April 30th, he would pay the price I asked.