Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo (c. 1837 – May 27, 1914) was an American heiress known for commissioning the Rhinelander Mansion located in Manhattan at 867 Madison Avenue on the south-east corner of 72nd Street, designed in the 1890s by Kimball & Thompson and completed in 1898. According to most sources, she never lived in the mansion, but chose to reside with her sister in a row house across the street from the mansion.[1]
Gertrude Rhinelander came from a family that had resided in New York since the 17th century and was born around 1837. She married stockbroker Frank Waldo in 1876, despite the fact that he had been bankrupted during the Panic of 1873. In May 1877, she gave birth to Rhinelander Waldo, a future Fire and Police Commissioner of New York. Her husband Frank died in 1878.[1] She received an inheritance in 1882 valued at $360,000 that consisted largely of real estate.[2] By 1889 she had been in a relationship with lawyer Charles Schieffelin. She sued him in 1899 to reclaim $12,000 she said he had misappropriated from her that he said he was going to invest the money in various railroad securities. In a counterclaim, Schieffelin said that he had invested the money as directed and that the two of them were going to be married. Waldo responded that she would never have married Schieffelin because of his earlier divorce.[3]
She bought a piece of property located at the corner of 72nd Street and Madison Avenue in 1882, announcing plans to construct a home that one journal called "quite unique in design". However, she did not go ahead with construction and lived with her sister Laura V. Rhinelander for many years in a row house on the opposite side of 72nd Street. Construction of the mansion was started in 1894 while she was living at the Savoy Hotel. She sold a portion of the property she had inherited around 1896 and used the proceeds to cover construction costs of $340,000, which were covered by a $195,000 mortgage.[2] Completed by 1898, the four-story house, which included a ballroom lit by 1,000 light bulbs and furnished at a cost of $1 million,[4] was never occupied during Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo's life.[1] By December 1909, the dilapidated structure was going to be sold at auction to cover a $10,000 judgment, a similar amount in unpaid taxes and the $150,000 due on a mortgage. Waldo had earlier reached an agreement to sell the house through a broker, but reneged on the deal when the papers effecting the transfer were ready to be signed, saying "I don't think I'll sell" and walking out on the offer.[4] Both houses that she constructed remained unoccupied and were subject to foreclosure proceedings in 1911 to cover judgments against Waldo.[2] In September 1911 Waldo transferred ownership of the mansion to her sister Laura V. Rhinelander along with other property that Waldo owned in Lower Manhattan on Washington Street and Barclay Street.[5] In 1915, The New York Times reported that at her death on May 27, 1914, she was over $135,000 in debt, consisting primarily of a pair of loans she received from the L. V. Rhinelander Estate..[2]
The Rhinelander Mansion was vacant until broken in 1921 into commercial use on the street level and two apartments on the four floors above. It now houses a showpiece clothing store of Polo Ralph Lauren.[1]