The name Rockefeller is synonymous with the term Barron of Industry,
but how much do you know about his lifestyle? Hi everyone ken here, welcome to this house.
Today we exploring the events that led John D Rockefeller to live a relatively modest lifestyle
while he was the wealthiest man in the united states. Make sure to hit that
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John D Rockefeller had a rough start to life. He was one of 6 children in a home run by his mother,
Eliza. His father, William, had all but abandoned his family in New York.
William was originally a lumberman, but found more money was to be made in deceiving people.
He paraded about the country as a Botanic Physician selling snake oil and elixirs
to cure every disease. With the money he made, he would seek out desperate farmers,
lend them money with steep interest, then buy their farms at auction when they would
inevitably be foreclosed on. Eliza tried to shield her children from William’s ways. She was a devout
Baptist who believed in hard, honest work. All of her kids did regular chores around the house
and got jobs to help make ends meet. Eliza was known for telling her children, “willful waste
makes woeful want.” To the contrary, William was quoted as saying, “I cheat my boys every chance
I get. I want to make ‘em sharp.” With parents who were extreme opposites, we can start to understand
how the young mind of John D. Rockefeller was molded into the robber barron he would become.
As a young boy, John worked to help his mother. He raised turkeys and sold produce, pitching in
for bills. In 1853, his family moved to Ohio where he would finish Highschool and attend a business
course at Folsom’s Commercial College receiving training to become a bookkeeper. At the age of 16,
he became an assistant bookkeeper for a produce commission firm.
He was a natural at this job and was quickly given other responsibilities
including negotiating transportation rates. Here, he learned that no prices were set,
that you could always negotiate if you were dealing with a large enough order.
By 1859, at the age of 20 years old,
he took everything he learned from his job and set out to build his own produce commission business.
He joined efforts with his friend to be business partner Maurice Clark to raise 4,000 dollars or
the modern day equivalent of about 140,000 dollars to start their business. Maurice invested 2000
of his own money while John invested his life savings of 800 dollars. He asked his
father for a loan of 1000 dollars, which William gladly did charging his son 10 percent interest.
Though at the time, the interest on the loan seemed like a lot of money to John, it was a
risk worth taking. In the first year alone, John profited about 17,000 dollars or the modern day
equivalent of about 600,000 dollars and was able to pay of the loan without any trouble. Then the
American civil war broke out and demand for food skyrocketed as Union troops headed to battle.
Supplying food to the Union Army made John quite wealthy, but he was still no where near his prime.
As the Civil war raged on, John became aware that his government contract would not last forever.
Being rather observant, he had noticed an increase in demand for oil, specifically kerosene for
lighting buildings. He began looking into the process of oil production and saw an industry
wrought with waste. Pumps would fill creeks with oil, men paling out what they wanted,
and the rest being wasted as if though it were water. Then he saw how the oil was refined,
with nearly half of the oil bring turned to waste. At this time, in 1862, oil was going
for as much as 13.75 per barrel or the modern day equivalent of about 403 dollars per barrel.
John started to strategize a more efficient system. He sold his business partner Clark on
the idea and they brought a chemist by the name of Samuel Andrews on board to help them out.
The trio figured out how to run the most efficient refinery in the country by creating new products
out of the waste. They sold petroleum jelly, paraffin wax, and lubricating oil in addition
to kerosene. The company did not outsource any of it’s work, but chose to hire people to do
everything in house which allowed them to price their oil at nearly half of the national average.
John bought out Clark’s stake in the company and reformed a partnership with Samuel Andrews
and Henry Morrison Flagler naming the firm Rockefeller, Andrews, and Flagler.
By the following year, their refinery had become the largest in the world.
In 1870, Rockefeller broke off by himself and formed the Standard Oil Company,
quickly becoming the largest refinery in Ohio. He began to take note of his father’s business
practices by threatening other refineries. He would offer to buy them out and if they refused,
he would drop the price of his oil so low that we would take a loss. The low prices would drive
customers to him and his competition would go bankrupt, at which point he would purchase
their businesses at foreclosure auctions. The business was now expanding into other states,
some of which did not allow non residents to own companies within their borders.
So he started the Standard Oil Trust in 1882 to act as a holding company and provide a loophole
to continue business in other states. This gave him control of 90 percent of the nation’s oil,
making him the wealthiest man in the United States with a net worth
around 1 billion dollars or the modern day equivalent of about 29 billion dollars.
With this money, he relocated his headquarters to new York city in 1884 and purchased a house
at number 4 54th street in Manhattan. The Italianate brownstone had been built 20
years earlier. The house rose 4 stories above ground and was considered to be a rather humble
residence compared to the limestone palaces of the Vanderbilt and Astor Families just
around the corner. Upon seeing the house, John immediately liked everything about it,
including it’s now outdated décor. He purchased the home fully furnished, not making any changes
other than adding area rugs to a few of the rooms. Here, John and his wife Laura would raise their
children the way John’s mother had raised him. Unlike his wealthy neighbors, he did not employ
a large staff. His children were responsible for doing chores and cleaning up after themselves
and Laura was known to clean, cook dinner, and do dishes. Newspapers reported on this phenomena
as the wealthiest family in the country were not waited on hand and foot like all of their
neighbors. This is quite incredible as we are about to see just how large his house was.
Stepping inside, you pass through double doors with stained glass panels to arrive
in the entrance hall complete with old growth wood wainscotting, elaborate door frames,
and hand milled crown molding. Next to the front door was the ingle
nook containing an elaborately carved wood relief set above a mantle with a bay window to the side.
As you continue on, you would pass below a hand stenciled ceiling before arriving
at the stair landing with intricately carved wood paneling now going from floor to ceiling.
As you begin to look around, you see would see the fluted newel posts caping off the ornate
banisters. Following the diagonal details, leading your eyes upward,
your gaze would continue up the 4 story atrium and rest on the arcade composed of fluted doric
columns hand carved from old growth wood supporting highly detailed arches. Here you
would see the underside of each ascending balcony finished out in a neat grid of wood paneling.
Before we make our way upstairs, lets turn around and head back towards the front door
and enter the opening to the side. This takes us into the parlor. Here we find a floor to ceiling
fireplace with scenes from antiquity carved into it’s lower mantle. It’s upper mantle dominated by
3 mirrors with maidens hand painted in the upper corners. All of this was set against over sized
base boards and wallpaper. Above the picture rail, in the frieze, was a mural that spanned the length
of the room, and above all this, on the ceiling was a mural surrounded by hand stenciled panels.
Passing through the opening, we would arrive in the Moorish smoking room.
With canonical corbels brightly colored and popping out of the frieze above damask wallpaper,
the wainscotting below took on a morish pattern with pointed arches sweeping above the floor.
Continuing through the opening at the end of the room, we would pass into the dining room,
our line of sight being dominated by another floor to ceiling fireplaces, but this time carved from
stone boasting 5 inlaid mirrors on it’s upper mantle. The ceilings above were coffered with
layers of dentil molding set against a hand painted floral pattern in the ceiling panels.
Beyond the dining room was the kitchen where we could imagine Mrs Rockefeller
cooking meals and doing dishes with her kids. It was equipped with state of the
art appliances and featured a separate pantry with a double sink and floor to ceiling storage.
Heading upstairs, we would arrive in the upper stair hall where we can look through
the archways at the floating staircase, the exterior wall being punctured with several
different shapes of windows. Continuing towards the front of the house, you would arrive in Mr.
Rockefeller’s bedroom foyer proudly displaying a portrait of himself below the coffered ceiling.
Continuing between columns, you would glance out across the bedroom decorated with layers of
wallpaper and featuring a hand stenciled ceiling from which a kerosene chandelier was suspended.
To once side of the room, below ornate fretwork,
was the dressing room complete with windows to allow more natural light to flood the space.
To the other side of the room was the private en suite Complete with an Eastlake mirror above
oversized vanity. This room doubled as a closet as we can notice the armoir set to the side.
Continuing through one of the doors in bathroom would bring you to the gravity toilet butted
up against the bathtub and joined by the same wood paneling set against encaustic wall tile.
As time went on in the house, John and Laura celebrated their
50th wedding anniversary in this house, but just a few months later, in 1915,
Laura died of a heart attack John, distraught by her passing, left the house and locked the
doors never to return, retiring to his vacation house. He allowed both his church and the YMCA to
use the home without charge including allowing the YMCA to create 50 dorms on the upper floor
for underprivileged women needing shelter. Later, during world war one, he opened the
house to the American red cross and had supplies sent to the volunteers to aid in their efforts.
He passed away in 1937, having given away over
half of his fortune to charities in the years since his wife had passed.
The house was left to his children who viewed the house as outdated. They attempted to sell the
architectural elements as salvage, but no buyers could be found so they had the house raized to the
ground. The site is now occupied by a sculpture garden owned by the museum of modern art.
But not everything was lost. John’s children had disassembled 2 rooms in the house before
its demolition. Mr. Rockefeller’s bedroom and dressing room were donated to the Museum of
the City of New York and the Moorish Smoking Room was reassembled in the Brooklyn Museum.
Today, both rooms can be seen, reassembled with their original furnishings in each museum.
Thank you all for watching, I really hope that you enjoyed this video. Which room was
your favorite? Make sure to let me know down in the comments section below. While you’re there,
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