Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [91]
Hetty, in fact, continued her daily ferry ride across the Hudson to Wall Street, but gradually, with Ned’s gentle insistence, she began to slow down. In 1911, Ned and Hetty began discussing forming a trust company to handle her affairs. Ned would oversee the trust, which would relieve Hetty of much of the overwhelming burden of keeping tabs on all of her vast and far-flung empire. They called the trust the Westminster Company, after the Vermont county where Bellows Falls lies.
Among Ned’s first acts as managing director of the Westminster Company was to help Hetty shed some of her vast real estate holdings, either through outright sale or by ninety-nine-year lease. In particular, Hetty began unloading her substantial Chicago properties. By now, she owned some ninety separate pieces of property in the city, worth at least $6 million. The lots, scattered around the city, were increasingly difficult for Hetty to keep track of. Most of the lots remained largely undeveloped, because of Hetty’s long-standing policy of keeping the taxes low while allowing the property values to rise. By the early twentieth century, Chicago was on its way to becoming one of the world’s great cities, and was bursting at the seams. Property Hetty held that had been quasi-rural scrubland was now close to the downtown and developers and residents clamored for the space. Her tactics had endeared her to few people—save for the farmers who tilled her vacant lots—but her policy held true to her financial convictions.
Among the first major sales was the 480-acre tract southwest of the city in Gage Park. Ned negotiated a sale price of nearly a million dollars for the land. Cobe and McKinnon, the buyers, immediately announced plans to develop the area as houses, apartments, and businesses to meet the city’s swelling needs.
Then, Ned found a buyer for an 11-acre lot in the northern lakeside suburb of Winnetka, for $80,000. Over the next several years Hetty, through Ned, disposed of numerous properties through sale or ninety-nine-year lease. Developers, including her Chicago real estate agent, R. F. Lowenstein, snapped up the long-dormant property. In July of 1912 she sold the six apartment buildings on Sibley Street for $140,000.
Among her downtown holdings, worth a total of around $3.5 million, the Howland Block at the southwest corner of Dearborn and Monroe was particularly valuable. The lone structure on the property was a dated, five-story building, but for years, developers had been pursuing Hetty, through her Chicago agents, to sell or lease the land for development. Acquired through foreclosure some thirty years earlier, the lot remained untouched, rising in value to $1,625,000 by 1911, according to the Chicago Board of Review. A developer leased the property from Hetty long-term at $65,000 per year. In short order she sold or leased numbers 183 through 187 Wabash Avenue, valued at $325,000; the plot on Wabash, near Harrison Street, worth around $200,000; the lot with 80 feet of frontage on Michigan Avenue, worth an estimated $1 million; and the houses at 211 and 213 Monroe Street, worth $157,000.
The headquarters of the Westminster Company consisted of three offices on the sixth floor of the Trinity Building at 111 Broadway in Manhattan. Administrators of the estate of millionaire Russell Sage operated in a suite in the same building. Sage, who died in 1906, had been a friend of Hetty’s. Hetty still put in full days. She occupied a Spartan office furnished with an old roll-top oak desk and three chairs. Often her days consisted of sitting next to enormous piles of coupons for bonds coming due. Patiently, steadfastly she worked her way through mound after mound of coupons,