Robert, Ogden, Robert, and Robert, Sorting out the Gilded Age Goelets. Part 2: Cousins

The death of brothers Ogden and Robert Goelet near the end of the nineteenth century left vast multi-million estates for their heirs, which in both their cases consisted of a widow, a teen-aged son, and daughter. After proper periods of mourning, their widows May and Harriet resumed their regal lifestyles with open speculation as to the possibility of one or the other remarrying.  

Increasingly though, the focus of the press shifted to the next generation, especially the sons Robert Walton Goelet and Robert Wilson Goelet, who would eventually control the majority of the family fortunes.

Given the similarity in their names, the press also on occasion had a hard time deciding which one they were talking about. Both belonged to the exclusive Jekyll Island Club (as had their fathers before them). Both attended Harvard, graduating in the class of 1902. To help distinguish them, Robert Walton Goelet was nicknamed “Bertie” while Robert Wilson Goelet was nicknamed “Bobby”. For a while, Bobby seemed to garner the lions share of publicity. When he came into a $500,000 installment of his inheritance at the age of 21 press dubbing him “Harvard’s wealthiest student “.

A year after his sister May’s 1903 wedding to the Duke of Roxburghe generated headlines nationwide, Bobby’s marriage to society beauty Elsie Whelan gave the press more fodder for its pages.

 Bobby and Elsie began their married life leasing a townhouse at 647 Fifth Avenue, one of the famed Marble twins built by the Vanderbilt family and just up the street from the family mansions. 

647 Fifth Avenue is on the left photo: Museum of the City of New York Digital Collections

After his cousin’s marriage, Bertie was now dubbed “the world’s wealthiest bachelor” by the press, connected at different times to heiresses Gladys Vanderbilt, Mary Harriman, and even the actress Ethel Barrymore.

He shared 591 Fifth Avenue with his mother (his sister Beatrice had tragically died in 1902 at the age of seventeen). Harriet had begun to spend more of her time in Europe, purchasing a Paris residence at 46 Avenue d’Iena. Bertie also used the family’s fishing lodge in New Brunswick.  Neither of them used the family house in Tuxedo Park (left to his late sister in their father’s will) and it was often rented out.  With two long periods of mourning, Harriet preferred cruising on her yacht, and Southside, the Newport cottage (after toying with the idea, Robert and Harriet never replaced it with something more palatial) remained closed for a number of seasons. 

 Meanwhile, Bertie and Elsie were becoming a social force in Newport. After leasing the T F Cushing cottage for the 1905 season, May began letting Bobby and Elsie use Ochre Court for the summers. 

When Harriet decided to open up Southside again in 1907 for the first time since her husband’s death, there were two Mrs. Robert Goelets in residence next door to each other, much to the consternation the resort’s telephone operators, delivery people, and social secretaries, but to the delight of the press (who could also get a tad confused on occasion, such as in the article below).

This story about Elsie (pictured) and her brilliant entertainments mistakenly pictured her cottage as Southside instead of Ochre Court.

The papers noted that both Mrs. Robert Goelets had a light-hearted attitude towards the inevitable mix-ups, and any competitiveness between the female heads of the family in years past seemed to have been put to rest. Harriet would occasionally loan the Nahma to various members of the Ogden Goelet branch (May sold the Mayflower to the US government in 1898). The most symbolic olive branch however, was at the Roxburghe-Goelet nuptials, when the two sisters-in-law accompanied each other down the aisle after the ceremony. 

 In 1908 Bertie purchased the Chateau de Sandricourt, the former home of the Marquis de Beauvoir outside of Paris (some papers erroneously identifying the Buyer as Bobby). Adding to the estate over time, it grew to encompass 139 other buildings on 10,000 acres.

He spent an increasing amount of there, eventually marrying a Frenchwoman from a wealthy family named Anne Marie Guestier in 1920. 

Bobby and Elsie commissioned Carrere and Hastings to design a new home for them in Chester, New York. Completed in 1911, the 35-room mansion, named Glenmore, resembled an Italian villa. It was the centerpiece of an estate that grew to be well over 1000 acres, featuring gardens designed by Beatrix Farrand, extensive stables, kennels, and a large hunting preserve.

The formal gardens at Glenmere

 Harriet passed away in 1912 at her Paris residence. Robert continued on at 591 Fifth Avenue after her death, despite the neighborhood becoming increasingly commercial.

591 Fifth Avenue (far left) during the 1920s. The house on the southern end of the block is the Gould mansion. Photo: Museum of the City of New York Digital Collections

Occupied by his Warren relations at the time, the Goelets’ Tuxedo Park house was destroyed by a fire in 1930.

 May resided at 608 Fifth Avenue until 1926, when she closed it up and moved into a suite at the Savoy Plaza.

608 Fifth Avenue (far right) in the 1920s

The mansion was reopened for May’s funeral after her death three years later. Its contents were later auctioned off and it was razed in 1930 to make way for a commercial structure, known as the Goelet building.

Long before that, Bobby and Elsie had gone their separate ways in 1914 (he would eventually marry two more times).

He resided for a time at a townhouse at 4 West 49th street, which served as a sort of annex to his parents’ mansion, later taking a large apartment at 820 Fifth Avenue. Other than opting for apartment living over a Fifth Avenue mansion, Bobby maintained his grand gilded age lifestyle through the depression years, maintaining Ochre Court for the summer season and Glenmere in the fall and spring.

Ochre Court 1930s

He added to his properties in 1935, purchasing a large sporting plantation outside Georgetown South Carolina named Wedgefield, and commissioning architect Lawrence Bottomley to design a neo-regency style home there.

Wedgefield

Towards the end of the decade, Robert Wilson Goelet now approaching 60, began to simplify his life. Glenmere was first put on the market, selling in 1940. In 1946 he sold Wedgefield. That same year he purchased  Champ Soleil, the former Mrs. Drexel Dahlgren cottage on Bellevue Avenue, a smaller and more manageable Newport Cottage (adding a wing for proper entertaining), while trying to divest himself of Ochre Court.

Champ Soleil, built in 1929

After attempts to give to his daughter, who supposedly told him the mere thought of living there depressed her, and then the United Nations, he donated it to the Sisters of Mercy, who used it to establish Salve Regina College in Newport. It continues to function as their administrative building today.

The Great Hall of Ochre Court today photo: SalveRegina.edu

.He also traded his large apartment for a smaller (but still grand) one at 4 East 66th street, where Robert Wilson Goelet died in 1966.

Decades before that, his cousin Robert Walton Goelet had died of a heart attack at 591 Fifth Avenue in 1941.

591 Fifth shortly before its demolition

 Bowing to the inevitable, the mansion was razed after his death. His widow Anne taking an apartment uptown at 990 Fifth Avenue.

She continued to summer at Southside until her own death in 1988.  It remains in the family to this day, considered one of the great monuments to the shingle style and one of the few Newport mansions still in the hands of the family that built it.

Perhaps it was for the best that Harriet and Robert didn’t replace Southside with a palace!

His descendants also kept his fishing lodge in Canada, and descendants lived on in the chateau de Sandricourt.

Contemporary view of Sandricourt

While none of Robert Wilson Goelet’s homes remained in the family, they still stand.

Champ Soleil continues as a private residence today, its most notable resident being utilities heiress Annie Laurie Aitken, better remembered today as the mother of the ill-fated Sunny von Bulow (whose cottage Clarendon Court was across the street).

Wedgefield currently functions as the clubhouse of a golf and country club by the same name.

Glenmere was recently restored and is now a luxury boutique hotel and restaurant. Both cousins had four children (including sons named, you guessed it, Robert), who have continued to burnish the family name, successfully manage the family fortune, and add to the family collection of stunning homes. While the subject could go on and on, this is probably a good place to stop (for part 1 of this post, you can click here)!