“Now, Morgenthau,” he said after sketching his predicament, “will you try to help us out?”
“I am perfectly willing,” I said, “to take other property of Mr. Astor’s, and let him deal direct with the objecting tenants, but I want a corner plot for a corner plot, and an inside avenue plot for an inside avenue plot and as many inside street lots as I was to have had. Although you have no properties on which the leases terminate the same time as these for which I am under contract, I am willing to buy them on the same basis,”--which was multiplying the annual ground rent by twenty.
Peabody said that this was eminently fair; he would try and show his appreciation, which he did, by selling us forty-four plots instead of forty. We consummated the transaction on July 18, 1898. The deed that was given was the first in which William Waldorf Astor failed to describe himself as “of the City of New York.” It was a very satisfactory transaction, as all but three of the tenants availed themselves of the privilege we gave them to buy the property from us at a reasonable profit.
The year 1898 marked the twentieth anniversary of Lachman, Morgenthau & Goldsmith. As I was leaving for my summer vacation, my partners urged me to plan out how we could celebrate that event. While I was fishing in the Thousand Islands, the infrequency of the bites of the black bass left me ample time for reflection, and I concluded that instead of a celebration, it would be a separation. I had felt so inclined for many years, but the delightful association with my partners, the extreme consideration they constantly showed me, the deep affection we felt for one another, had caused me to delay, and their persuasion not to do so had prevented my taking the final step. Here during these uninterrupted hours on the St. Lawrence, I was able to look at myself objectively and from both a retrospective and prospective point of view.
The success of my real estate operations had won me away from the exclusive devotion to the law which is so essential to rise in that profession. In figuring the profits that had been made by the various real estate syndicates that I had managed since 1891, I was surprised at the total, and realizing that at no one time had I had the use of more than $500,000 of my friends’ and my own money, I concluded that if I had had a company with that amount of capital, and could show the profits that had been made as surplus, the good will of such a company would be very valuable and would be reflected in the selling price of the stock. So why not induce some leading financiers to join me in the formation of a real estate trust company, which would do for real estate what the banking institutions have done for the railroads and industrials?