Robert Goelet

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Robert Goelet (September 29, 1841 – April 27, 1899) was a real estate developer in New York City and a director of the Chemical National Bank. He had a house in New York, at 591 Fifth Avenue, and seasonal residences in Tuxedo Park and Newport, Rhode Island. He was a member of the exclusive New York Yacht Club and the Union Club, in addition to other fashionable clubs of the time including the Jekyll Island Club on Jekyll Island, Georgia.

Life and career

Robert Goelet was born on September 29, 1841, a nephew of Peter Goelet. The birth was in the family house at 5 State Street, overlooking the Battery in Manhattan. He graduated from Columbia College in 1860 and was subsequently admitted to the bar, but concentrated on managing the real estate of his father, Robert Goelet, and his unmarried uncle Peter, whose combined estates eventually came to him and his younger brother, Ogden. (Ogden built Ochre Court, one of the great Newport mansions).

Goelet married Sarah Ogden (1813–1879). After her death in 1879, he married Louise Warren, the daughter of George Henry Warren of New York, a prominent lawyer. With Henrietta he had a son, Robert Walton Goelet, who was born in 1880.[1][2] His fifteen-year old daughter, Beatrice, immortalized as a child by John Singer Sargent,[3] died of pneumonia at the Fifth Avenue house on February 11, 1902.[4]

His yacht Nahma was designed by George L. Watson and built for him on the River Clyde in 1897. After his death it was extensively used for summer cruising in European waters by his son Robert Walton Goelet, who lent the yacht at no cost to the United States Navy, who operated it as USS Nahma (SP-771) from 1917 to 1919, after which it was returned.

Robert Goelet died on April 27, 1899 in Naples, Italy.[5]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ "Robert W. Goelet Dies In Home At 61. Corporation Director, Owner of Large Realty Holdings Here, Succumbs to Heart Attack. He Inherited $60,000,000. Sportsman, a Leader in Social Circles in Newport and New York, Kin of Early Settlers". New York Times. May 3, 1941. Retrieved 2010-07-26. "Robert Walton Goelet of New York and Newport, R. I., a member of one of New York's oldest and wealthiest families, died of a heart attack yesterday at his ..." 
  2. ↑ "Death Claims Robert Goelet Financier, 61. Outstanding Business Executive Was One of Largest Property Owners in New York City". Associated Press in the Hartford Courant. May 3, 1941. Retrieved 2010-07-26. "Robert Walton Goelet, 61, of New York and Newport, R. I., a financier and one of New York's largest property owners, died today in his old brownstone house at 48th Street and Fifth Avenue, one of the few remaining private residences on the..." 
  3. ↑ Illustration
  4. ↑ "Miss Beatrice Goelet dead", The New York Times, 12 February 1902 accessed 24 August 2010.
  5. ↑ "Death of Robert Goelet. Heart Disease Causes the End Unexpectedly at Naples. His Public Spirit and Benevolence Were of Material Benefit to New York and Newport". New York Times. April 28, 1899. Retrieved 2010-07-26. "News reached this city yesterday of the death in Naples of Robert Goelet, real estate owner, financier, and society leader. Mr. Goelet's legal representative here, Mr. George De Witt, received information that death was caused by heart failure. This intelligence was a startling surprise to Mr. Goelet's New York friends, who, when they saw him in this city not long ago, formed the opinion that he was in excellent health." 


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