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| The first George Gould house was a Victorian confection -- Photograph by Bryon Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
At the age of 23, George Jay Gould, son of the
vastly-wealthy Jay Gould, married Edith Kingdon in 1887. The newlyweds moved into No. 1 East 47th
Street, directly behind the Gould’s Fifth Avenue mansion and a passageway was
constructed connecting the two homes.
Here three children were born—two boys, Kingdon and Jay, and a little
girl.
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| Young George cut a dashing figure -- photograph Library of Congress |
Rather than attend college, George had preferred to go into
business with his father. While his
personal fortune grew, he apparently felt it necessary to ask him for financial
assistance in building a larger house to accommodate his growing family and
social ambitions.
In 1892 Jay Gould, bedridden with tuberculosis, amended his
will to reflect the money he gave George to purchase a house on upper Fifth
Avenue. Of the “five millions of dollars”
he bequeathed his son, he deducted “the amounts advanced by me for the purchase
of a house for him on Fifth avenue, New York City.”
Around the time of the revised will, about two or three
weeks before Jay Gould died, George and his family moved in to No. 857 Fifth
Avenue at the corner of 67th Street (brother Edwin moved into the 47th
Street mansion). The 50-room house smacked vaguely of the
William K. Vanderbilt residence on Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street—albeit
on a less opulent scale. A corner turret
with a long, conical cap was ringed by pierced stone balconies. The busy riot of peaked gables, balustrades
and bays was the epitome of late Victorian taste.
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| Edith Kingdon Gould not long after her marriage to George --photograph Library of Congress |
Although Edith made time to entertain lavishly, she
consistently bore children. She later showed a friend the marriage bed
that George had had designed for their wedding night. It was carved with entwined hearts, lover’s
knots and painted with eight cupids at the altar of love. “I shall never forget my feelings when I
first saw it. I just knew I should have
eight children if I slept in that bed…and so I did.”
Three years after the Goulds moved into the new house,
rumors began circulating regarding George’s sister Anna. The 21-year old was doggedly courted by hopeful young men. On February 10, 1895 The New York Times said “About
a year after her father’s death it was announced that she was engaged to be
married to Harry Woodruff, then an actor in Palmer’s company…The report went
forth in January, 1894, that Miss Gould was to marry William M. Harriman, a
well-known clubman…Miss Gould was reported to be engaged to Prince Francis
Joseph of Battenberg, a brother of Queen Victoria’s son-in-law; then to Count
Talleyrand-Perigord…and, finally, not more than a month ago, to Henry Woodruff
again. All these supposed suitors are
now on the shelf.”
The reason that the men were “on the shelf” was due to the
announced engagement of Anna to Count Jean de Castellane, “son of the Marquis
de Castellane, whose estates are the chateaux de Rochecotte and Langelais, on the
banks of the Loire, France,” said the newspaper. The Times added “With the announcement…is
coupled the statement that the bridegroom will receive a settlement of
$2,000,000.”
Because the French tradition insisted on a civil ceremony
and American society insisted on a lavish church ceremony; both were
planned. With both of her parents dead,
the civil ceremony was slated to be held in George’s house; the religious
service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral would be officiated by Archibishop Corrigan (although
Anna, like her father, was a Presbyterian).
The Times called the Count “tall and well-proportioned, and
he has a sprightly way that manifests itself in his walk and gestures. His complexion is clear and fair. His hair about approaches the tint called ‘golden.’ His face has a very young look. Altogether, he appears to be a young man in
perfect health, who thoroughly enjoys life and has never had much to worry
him. He dresses in excellent taste.”
The Count’s family arrived in New York and were the guests
of George and Edith. The Marquis and Marquise de Castellane were
introduced to New York society at a dinner in the mansion. And despite that fact that the church
service would be “much more elaborate than those for the civil marriage on
Saturday,” according to The Times, Fifth Avenue around the Gould mansion would
be the scene of near chaos on March 2, 1895.
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| A line of carriages drops guests off at the awning erected for the wedding -- Photograph by Bryon Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
Police were in force to hold back the crowds who
jammed the sidewalks and streets to get a glimpse of wealthy New Yorkers and
titled Europeans.
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| Fifth Avenue is jammed with well-dressed curiosity-seekers on the day of Anna's wedding -- Photograph by Bryon Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
Around this time George commissioned Bruce Price to design
the family’s country estate, Georgian Court, in Lakewood, New Jersey. It was described as one of the “most
magnificent private residences in the United States.” Here the Goulds would spent not only their
summers, but much of the winter season as well.
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| With the erection of the Thomas F. Ryan home next door, the Gould mansion was suddenly dated -- Photograph by Bryon Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
Throughout the years Edith was famous for her
entertainments. In February 1900, when
Anna and the Count returned to New York for a visit, Edith got top billings in
the society pages--over Mrs. Astor--with a dinner in the latest style. “Perhaps the event of the day which has been
most discussed is the dinner and musicale to be given by Mrs. George J. Gould
at 857 Fifth Avenue. This entertainment
was arranged a number of weeks ago, and some time before the Count and Countess
de Castellane arrived in this country.
There will be one of the new-fashioned dinner gatherings, at which some
fifty-six guests will be seated at small tables. The dinner will be followed by a musicale, to
which over a hundred additional guests have been asked.”
As it turned out, the purpose of the visit by Anna and the
Count revolved around financial problems.
By the end of the year, the couple’s extravagant spending resulted in
the French Government appointing George Gould the trustee of his sister’s
money. Their lavish lifestyle included building a $3
million palace in Paris which was an exact replica of Le Petit Trianon, the
Count’s purchase of the yacht Valhalla for $500,000 and refitting her for
another $250,000, and a ball which “excited the wonder of Paris.” The event, according to The New York Times, “was a
reproduction, enhanced by every modern appliance possible, of the wedding
festival of Marie Therese of Austria and Louis XIV. Over 1,000 persons were employed either as
performers or servants. The guests
numbered 3,000. The fete, it is said,
cost $300,000.”
With George minding the purse strings, things were a bit
less ostentatious in the de Castellane household.
In 1904 Edith had been spending the greater part of the
winter at Georgian Court, but returned to the Fifth Avenue house to be operated
on. For over a year she had been
suffering from appendicitis attacks and her doctor suggested the operation;
saying nothing would be gained by delaying it.
Rather than suffer the indignity of a hospital, the surgery took place
in the mansion on March 30, 1904.
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| By the turn of the century the Fifth Avenue facade was covered in ivy -- Photograph by Bryon Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
Two years later Dr. William B. Anderton would be back in the
house again, this time delivering the Goulds’ seventh child, and fourth
daughter on March 4, 1906. The Times
noted that “Mr. Gould is proud of his large family, and has devoted a great
deal of time to the physical training of his children. In connection with his Lakewood estate there
is an athletic field, a theatre, a race track and a swimming pool for their
benefits. Mr. Gould plays with them, and
he and his two oldest boys are among the greatest polo enthusiasts in the
country. The boys have the finest of
polo ponies, while the girls have ponies of their own.” The article added, somewhat surprisingly to
21st century readers, “All have automobiles as well.”
Concern for the newborn would soon be felt when, within two
weeks, her sister Marjorie contracted measles.
The infection spread to young Kingdon shortly after. The danger of the disease in 1904 prompted a
headline in The Times “Kingdon Gould Has Measles—Ill at His Father’s Home—His Sister
Marjorie Better.”
While the children were being nursed inside the house,
mysterious doings were going on outside.
In April private watchman John J. O’Brien told police he had seen
William McInnis “many times in the past month” peering into the basement
windows of the Gould house. “He was
never able to explain what he was doing,” he said.
On April 3 Patrolman Collins arrested McInnis and charged
him “with lurking at night about the residence of George J. Gould” and being a “suspicious
person.”
The judge did not see an offense. “I don’t see that he has committed any overt
act,” said Magistrate Pool in Yorkville Court.
He instructed the officer “If he commits any offense, lock him up, but I
don’t see that he has. He is discharged.”
McInnis’s father vouched for his son, saying he had been “acting
queerly” lately because of stomach trouble, but there was “no harm in him.”
In 1907 the Victorian pile at No. 857 Fifth Avenue was
grossly outdated. Next door the stately
white mansion of Thomas Fortune Ryan stood in stark contrast to the old-fashioned
Gould house. The Goulds set out to
remedy the situation. In March of that
year Philadelphia-based architect Horace Trumbauer filed plans for a new mansion
to replace the 15-year old home. The
New York Times reported that “The house will be of stone, five stories high.”
Trumbauer harmonized the completed $1.25 million Italian
palace with the Ryan mansion. The
rusticated base was a near match to its neighbor, as was the cornice. To maintain proportions, the fifth floor was
deftly set back, causing the mansion to appear a story shorter than it was. Inside were the expected period rooms—such as
the Regency Room paneled in Circassian walnut with rose red draperies. Bathtubs and washbasins were carved from
solid marble and some bathroom fittings were of gold.
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| The replacement mansion bore no resemblance to its predecessor. The brownstone house next door to Ryan's has been leveled to give the millionaire a garden-- Photograph by Bryon Company, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
It was intended as a grand venue for entertaining. “The residence contains two reception and
ballroom floors,” said The Times. It was
the scene of a dance to announce the engagement of Marjorie to Anthony J.
Drexel, Jr., of Philadelphia on January 18, 1910. Following the April 19 wedding in St. Bartholomew’s
Episcopal Church, the reception was held in the Fifth Avenue house.
A year later it would be repeated when the Goulds gave a
dinner dance for debutante daughter Helen Vivien on January 20, 1911 in
anticipation of her February marriage to Lord Decies of London. The
140 guests at dinner included some of the most recognized names in New York
society—John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt, Mr. and Mrs. William Earl
Dodge, Mr. and Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish and Mr. and Mrs. Mackay among them.
As the ceremony neared The New York Times remarked that “The
interest in society over this wedding may be said to be almost world-wide,
especially in view of the fact that Lord Decies has spent twenty-three years’
service in the English Army and is well known in social circles in nearly every
country of the British Empire.”
Like her aunt’s wedding more than 15 years earlier, Vivien’s
attracted thousands. “Before and after
the church ceremony thousands of curious people formed a sort of human wall
partly around the church and even extending over the rooftops,” said the
newspapers. Despite intense security,
twelve or fifteen women managed to barge into St. Bartholomew’s. “They made a wild scramble for the interior
of the church, and were in the act of plucking the Easter lilies from the nave
as souvenirs when they were forcibly ejected,” said The Times.
Following the ceremony, the Fifth Avenue mansion was crowded
with celebrated political and social figures.
Included were an ambassador, the Marquis and Marchioness of Salisbury,
Prince de Carini, Lord Eustace Percy, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sir
Bache and Lady Cunard, Mr. and Mrs. Elihu Root, along with a number of Vanderbilts,
Belmonts, Cuttings, Auchinclosses, and Atterburys.
By the time Edith and George’s granddaughter, Edith Kingdon
Drexel, was christened in the house in December of that year, things were
becoming strained between them. Edith’s
once glamorous figure was gone.
Overweight and matronly, she spent more and more time at Georgian Court
while George acquired a wandering eye.
He began an affair with showgirl Guinevere Sinclair, a “Gaiety
Girl” dancer. In 1913 he presented her
with a fashionable home at No. 323 West 74th Street and on April 15,
1915 a son, George Sinclair, was born.
Later that year Edith did something a bit shocking. Arnold Daly was producing a moving picture
for Pathe called “Ashton Kirk, Investigator.”
The script called for a scene set
in a mansion ballroom. According to
Moving Picture World on August 21, 1915, “Mr. Daly wanted to get a ballroom
scene with all the realism of life in high society. Mrs. George Gould generously permitted the
use of her palatial residence at 857 Fifth avenue, New York. Upper Fifth avenue opened its eyes to see a
long line of carriages and automobiles discharging scores of men and women in
evening dress at high noon before the Gould residence, and received by lines of
powdered footmen in full livery.”
The extended Gould family--including Edith--was aware of George’s indiscrete
affair with Sinclair but society was kept in the dark. As war broke out in Europe, Edith turned her
focus to war relief. She hosted a talk in the Fifth Avenue house by Arthur Stanley Riggs on “France: Its Romance, Beauty and Art” in February
1916. The proceeds went to aid French
soldiers disabled in battle and “the destitute women of France.”
In 1918 she was chairman of the Entertainment Committee for
the mayor’s Committee of Women on National Defense and used the Fifth Avenue
mansion as the collection point for “theatrical properties, wigs, grease
paints, costumes, etc., for entertainments to be given among themselves by
soldiers in the camps.”
In the meantime, George and Guinevere Sinclair had produced
another child. A daughter, Jane, arrived
in 1917.
Society was shocked when, on May 26, 1920, 18-year old Edith
C. Gould eloped with Carroll L. Wainwright.
Edith and George were informed by
telegram from their daughter saying that she was married. Reporters rushed to the Fifth Avenue mansion
for comments. George downplayed the
scandal.
“I do not understand just why these young people considered
an elopement necessary, but our family will certainly wish them all success,”
he told the New-York Tribune. “All
success” did not necessarily mean Gould family money; for a month later The Sun
and New York Herald described Edith’s considerably reduced circumstances. She and her husband were living in a
four-room apartment and “does her own housework.”
Meanwhile, Edith tried hard to lose weight and recapture the
attentions of her husband. She went on
diets, underwent massages and took up golf.
In 1921 she resumed entertaining and on January 16, when the New-York
Tribune reported on the “brilliant entertainment” in the Gould mansion for
about 400 guests, it added “It was the first large affair Mrs. Gould has given
in a number of years, when her entertainments in pre-war days used to be among
the features of New York’s social season.”
Tragically, her attempts to win back George would prove
fatal. In order to lose weight and
appear thin, she took to wearing a tortuously tight rubber suit under her
clothing. While playing golf with George
in November 1921, she suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack. Beneath her golfing outfit was the
suffocating rubber suit.
Edith’s funeral was held in the mansion and was surprisingly
brief. “The services required only
twenty minutes,” said the New-York Tribune on November 17. The funeral was attended only by immediate
family and close friends; however the small group of about 50 inside the house
was contrasted with throngs outside. “More
than a thousand persons, women predominating, crowded the sidewalks opposite
the Fifth Avenue entrance of the home and corners of Madison Avenue and East
Sixty-seventh Street during the holding of the services,” said the newspaper.
As was common at the time, the Gould homes were in Edith’s
name. Perhaps with Guinevere Sinclair in
mind, her will was explicit on one point in particular. “I give, devise and bequeath unto my beloved
husband, George Jay Gould, for and during his life and until he remarries,
these two certain pieces of real estate.”
Quite clearly, if George remarried, he would lose the house and
everything in it.
It did not take George long to decide. On July 13, 1922 The New York Times reported
that he had arrived in Paris with a woman and “registered at the Hotel Meurice
as Mr. and Mrs. Gould.” Before long the
newspapers began piecing together the scandalous story, including the two
bastard children.
Ironically, George would not enjoy his marriage for
long. In May 1923 he died alone in
France from heart disease. It was the
beginning of a bitter fight for the $15 million estate between the Gould children
and the new Mrs. Gould.
Legal battles dragged on for several years as Guinevere attempted to get possession of valuable
paintings and real estate. Finally, on
June 18, 1925 the estate was settled with Guinevere receiving $1.5 million in Library
bonds and a $4 million trust for the two Sinclair children.
Meanwhile, the Fifth Avenue house was purchased in 1923 by
Harry Payne Whitney. In December 1925 it
became home to his mother-in-law Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt, who had just sold her
mansion at No. 1 West 57th Street for $7 million. The colorful Alice Vanderbilt lived on in the
mansion until her death on April 22, 1934.
It was inherited by her daughter, Gladys, Countess Szechenyi.
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| Photograph by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
As Gladys aged, maintaining her massive homes, including The
Breakers in Newport, was troublesome. In
1948 she leased the The Breakers to the Preservation Society of Newport County,
keeping a small section for herself. By
1951, at the age of 65, she rarely spent time in the Fifth Avenue home. The New York Times mentioned that it was “occupied
only sporadically in recent years by the countess, who maintains an apartment
here and a home in Newport, R. I., as well as Washington.”
In December 1951 she sold the Fifth Avenue mansion to the
Institute of International Education. In
reporting on the sale, The New York Times described the mansion’s solid
construction in terms of 20th century Cold War era thinking: “Believed to be one of the safest dwellings
in the city in the event of an atomic bomb attack, the edifice is constructed
of steel and concrete, with an exterior of gray limestone.”
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| Exquisite carving graced the entrance -- Photograph by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UP1GW73NQK&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=894 |
Kenneth Holland, president of the Institute, said the
organization “hope to set up a working center not only for the exchange of
students and professors but for the development of new programs that will facilitate
the transocean exchange of business men, newspaper men, labor leaders, farm
youth and public officials.”
For the house that had cost George Gould $1.25 million to
build, the Institute paid $400,000. The
handsome mansion would not be around much longer, however. On April 1, 1962 The Times reported that “Duplexes
of the ground floor maisonette type, which will have their own street or lobby entrance,
are planned for two nineteen-story buildings soon to be built on Fifth Avenue.”
Both structures were being designed by architect Robert L.
Bien; one of them to replace the Gould mansion at No. 857 Fifth Avenue.
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| The Fifth Avenue corner where carriages dropped elegantly dressed wedding guests is no longer even a memory -- photo Cityrealty.com |
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