They reduced miserliness to a supreme art. 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. The second generation of the Goelets counting from the founder of the fortune were incorrigibly parsimonious. 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 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. Father of Robert Goelet. This eccentric was very melancholy and, apart from his queer collection of pets, cared for nothing except land and houses. The family was descended from Peter Goelet, a wealthy New York merchant in the 18th century. 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. He was a member of socially prominent New York family. 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. Goelet, it seems, was allowed to pay in installments. There he studied law and was admitted to practice. 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 hint, at least. The Lost Robert Goelet Mansion - No. 591 5th Avenue In later years, the family's main residence was at 591 Fifth Avenue in New York. Ogden Goelet was an American heir, businessman and yachtsman from New York City during the Gilded Age. The founding and aggrandizement of other great private fortunes from land were accompanied by methods closely resembling, or identical with, those that the Astors employed. Minutes of the [New York City] Common Council, 1807, xvi:286. The principal landowner in this one section, not to mention other sections of that immense city, was Marshall Field, with $11,000,000 worth of land ; the next was Leiter, who owned in that section land valued at $10,500,000.8 It appeared from this report that eighteen persons owned $65,000,000 of this $319,000,000 worth of land, and that eighty-eight persons owned $136,000,000 worth or one-half of the entire business center of Chicago. 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. Now Forbes has compiled the first comprehensive ranking of the richest families in America: 185 dynasties with fortunes of at least $1 billion. 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. They're collectively worth $1.2 trillion. 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. The case looked black. The volume of its business rose to enormous proportions. These lots have a present aggregate value of perhaps $15,000,000 or more, although they are assessed at much less.
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