In 1908, he purchased the Sandricourt estate, the former residence of the Marquis de Beauvoir, on the outskirts of Paris. The estate, where he spent much of his time, which he purchased for $300,000, had 139 buildings, grain fields and herds of cattle. He also owned a fishing lodge on the Restigouche River, which separates New Brunswick from Quebec. He inherited vast real estate holdings in New York, sometimes known as the Goelet Realty Company, which included the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the property between 52nd and 53rd Streets on Park Avenue which the Racquet and Tennis Club leased. Among his other New York holdings were the southeast corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, 14 Sutton Place South, 1400 Broadway, 53 Broadway, and the building on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 37th Street. He also owned sixteen four-story townhouses on Park Avenue built by his father in 1871. After Goelet's death in 1941, his estate leased the land on which the sixteen townhouses were built, which were torn down and replaced by 425 Park Avenue, which, at the time of the construction, it was one of the tallest buildings that utilized the bolted connections. The 32-story building was open in 1957 with National Biscuit Company, Kaye Scholer, Chemical Corn Exchange Bank as major tenants. It too was torn down and replaced by a new tower at 425 Park designed by architect Lord Norman Foster, still on land owned by the Goelet family.
Personal life
In 1909, Goelet was reportedly engaged toMary Harriman, daughter of railroad executive E. H. Harriman. The engagement was later denied in October, and Mary married the sculptor and polo player Charles Cary Rumsey in 1910. In 1920, he became engaged to Anne Marie Guestier, and later married her in Bordeaux on January 24, 1921. Anne Marie was the daughter of Daniel Guestier, a director of the Orleans Railroad "who at one time was said to have been the wealthiest wine merchant of France and the owner of vast estates." She received the French Legion of Honor for aiding French-American wives during World War II and for providing medical services to inhabitants in the vicinity of Sandricourt, the Goelet family estate outside Paris, after it was liberated in August 1944. Together, Anne Marie and Robert were the parents of four children:
Beatrice Goelet, who married Hayward Ferry Manice, son of William de Forest Manice, in 1948.
Robert Guestier Goelet, a former Lt. in the U.S. Navy Reserve who was elected a director of the Chemical Bank in 1952.
Francis Goelet, a noted philanthropist and patron of the arts who died unmarried.
John Goelet, who married Henrietta Fanner, daughter of William Rogers Fanner, and later lived in Paris.
After several months of ill health, Goelet died on May 2, 1941 of a heart attack, aged 61, in his brownstone on Fifth Avenue at 48th Street. After a funeral service at St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, he was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. In his will, he left the Ritz-Carlton Hotel to Harvard University. His widow was given his personal effects and property along with life use of their home on Narragansett Avenue in Newport and their estate in France. His widow lived almost another 47 years until her death in 1988.
Legacy
In 1958, in Goelet's honor, his widow and four children donated $500,000 toward the construction of the Metropolitan Opera's new home at Lincoln Center, where the grand staircase bears a plaque with his name. As of 2012, the Goelet's Newport estate at Narragansett Avenue and the corner of Ochre Point Avenue, remained in the Goelet family.
