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Updated: May 24, 2025
Next to the Astors' estate the Goelet landed possessions are perhaps the largest urban estates in the United States in value. The landed property of the Goelet family on Manhattan Island alone is estimated at fully $200,000,000. The founder of the Goelet fortune was Peter Goelet, an ironmonger during and succeeding the Revolution.
Ogden Goelet , and Mrs. Daniel Butterfield . On the next block, Charles F. Hoffman , and August Hecksher ; and between Fifty-first and Fifty-second, William B. Coster , William B.O. Field , and Robert Goelet . Then, on to the Plaza, comes the sweep of the houses of the Vanderbilts, and the residence of Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler , Samuel Untermeyer , F. Lewisohn , H. McK. Twombly , William Rockefeller , Mrs.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Although the State of Illinois formally retains a nominal say in its management, yet it is really owned and ruled by eight men, among whom are John Jacob Astor, and Robert Walton Goelet, associated with E. H. Harriman, Cornelius Vanderbilt and four others.
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. Of Peter Goelet's business methods and personality no account is extant. But as to his methods in obtaining land, there exists little obscurity.
In 1884 it reached an aggregate of $30,000,000 a year; in 1901 it was estimated at fully $50,000,000 a year. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. Thus, an entry, on January 26, 1807, in the municipal records, reads: "On receiving the report of the Street Commissioner, Ordered that warrants issue to Messrs. Anderson and Allen for the three installments due to them from Mr.
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. These brothers had set out with an iron determination to build up the largest fortune they could, and they allowed no obstacles to hinder them.
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