George Herbert Walker in NY

Have you ever wondered why George Herbert Walker moved to New York in 1920 after living his entire life up  to that point in St. Louis? That momentous event occurred only one year before his favorite daughter, Dorothy Walker, married a  young graduate of Yale (Skull and Bones 1917) named Prescott Sheldon Bush, who had spent most of his life up to then in Columbus, Ohio.

As World War I persisted and bankers watched the Tsarist monarchy collapse in Russia, American business men saw only new opportunities and dollars signs ahead of them. Less than five years after the death of J.P. Morgan and the birth of the Federal Reserve private banking system, bankers were vying to fill the role J.P. Morgan had played for decades. Morgan's affiliated banking, insurance and industrial corporations--comprising American infrastructure--would soon be targeted by a major competitor from another elite group.

George Bush's Grandfather--1920

Prescott Bush's first-born son was named for Dorothy's dad, George Herbert Walker, while Prescott and Dorothy lived in Milton, Massachusetts. He was allegedly working for a vinyl flooring company there on the eastern coast of Massachusetts on Adams Street, almost next door to the museum of one of the Forbes brothers who spent numerous years engaged in the China Trade for Russell  &  Co. Houqua's investments began as $1,000,000 worth of tea sent to John Murray Forbes in the 1840's.

 

When Russell & Co. filed bankruptcy in 1891, it was primarily due to its inability to reconcile the books on behalf of what it called "The Houqua Trust," according to an online treatise called Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century:

The House of Houqua and the Canton System.

The investments had actually been entrusted to the partners in J. M. Forbes & Co, who used the value to increase their percentage shares in Russell & Co. In 1879, however, the descendants of Houqua, who had withdrawn from commercial trade after his death in 1843, had gradually lost their company trade name, Yihe, to Jardine & Matheson & Co., particularly the trade in opium. 

 

No further profits arose from that trade between J.M. Forbes & Co. and any of the Houqua sons. The Forbes brothers died, and the firm was operated at the time of the dissolution of the trust by John Murray Forbes and his sons, William Hathaway and John Malcolm Forbes. They were all named in the release signed by Houqua's legal heir under Chinese law.

We are told, however, that the release did not end the relationship with Russell & Co., which continued to hold investments of the Chinese family until 1891, the year it filed bankruptcy. At that time, according to the Forbes Family Papers, it included as partners grandsons of James Grant Forbes, the older brother of John Murray and Robert Benet Forbes, the original partner:

John Murray Forbes, Jr. (1844-1921) and Francis "Frank" Blackwell Forbes (1839-1908). 

See the Forbes Family Tree chart.

 

Several members of the Forbes family were still living in Milton during the years Prescott and Dotty lived there in the early 1920's.

 

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Prescott Bush had become George Herbert Walker's  son-in-law in 1921, one year after Bert, as Walker was known, realized he could be of more service to the wealthy families of St. Louis by working from the Wall Street section of New York.

Unnamed investment bank announced 1920

He would combine his St. Louis clientele into a larger group of equally wealthy citizens of other parts of the country. 

 

Taking his friend, Charles L. Holman, president of Laclede Gas in St. Louis, with him, he announced he already had the support of the following men from various parts of the nation, as named in the New York Tribune in January 1920:

 

• Frederick Baldwin Adams (Yale, Skull and Bones, 1900), married to Ellen W. Delano, daughter of Warren Delano, Jr.;
• Eugene G. Grace, president of anti-union Bethlehem Steel;
• W. Averell Harriman (Yale, Skull and Bones, 1913)
• Henry Lockhart, oilman and banker;
• William Chapman Potter, President of Guaranty Trust and former son-in-law of Paul Morton (former Secretary of the Treasury under Teddy Roosevelt);
  
• Samuel F. Pryor, formerly of St. Louis
• Percy Avery Rockefeller (Yale, Skull and Bones, 1900), son of William Rockefeller of National City Bank;
• Eugene W. Stetson, then Guaranty Trust vice-president and future president and chairman of the same banking institution;
  
• Joseph Rockwell Swan Yale, Skull and Bones, 1902); future president of Guaranty Trust;
• Harold Stanley, vice president of Guaranty Trust;
  
• Malcolm Whitman, professional tennis player ranked higher than Dwight F. Davis, the St. Louis man for whom Bert Walker set up the Davis Cup;
  
• J. Ogden Armour, meat packer from Chicago;
  
• Elton Hoyt of Cleveland;  and
  
• Joseph E. Uihlein, head of Schlitz beer company, of Milwaukee.
  

First dubbed "Morton & Co," the new company that Bert Walker went to work for eventually bore the name W.A. Harriman & Co. This change came also after the St. Louis Star had reported Bert's new firm was to be a division of the Guaranty Trust Company, a subsidiary to be named simply "Guaranty Company, " that would sell securities to wholesale brokers, rather than to individual members of the public.

 

Why was it Bert didn't take that job? Perhaps he just decided he didn't want to do that kind of work. Or possibly he had a better offer from the Harriman family. Most likely, however, there was dissension in the ranks of the Morton family, and both of Paul Morton's sons-in-law wanted to be in charge.

 

In October of 1920 the opening of the Guaranty Company was formally announced with a different president, Charles H. Sabin. The vice presidents, interestingly enough, included Joseph R. Swan, Eugene W. Stetson, and Harold Stanley, three of the men who had backed Walker in January for the position. Sabin was married to one of Paul Morton's daughters, while William Chapman Potter was married to her sister, Caroline Morton. Before long, though, Caroline divorced Potter to marry Harry Guggenheim, whose wealth was managed by the Guaranty Trust.

Wheatly (Wheatley) Road in Long Island

 

Apparently there was quite a bit of horse-trading going on in the wings after Walker moved to his new home, either the one at Sutton Place or the one in Wheatly (sometimes called Wheatley) Hills next door to Harry Payne Whitney's family. Wheatley Stables was nearby--a business set up by Ogden Mills and his sister Gladys, married to Henry Carnegie Phipps. According to her New York Times obituary, she named her horse stables "Wheatley for the Westbury road on which her marble home was situated."

 

The father of H.C. Phipps had amassed a fortune as a partner of Andrew Carnegie in their steel plant in Pennsylvania, which had been capitalized by the Morgan Bank. Phipps had then invested heavily in land in Florida, becoming one of the first millionaires with a residence in Palm Beach. Gladys Mills Phipps' son, Henry C. Phipps, Jr. built the town of Gulf Stream, where he also built a golf course and polo grounds.

 

In Manhattan Bert acquired a home at Sutton Place, but he also had a country home on Long Island, on Wheatley Hills Road in Old Westbury.

W.A. Harriman & Co.

 

In 1920 Averell was a young man divided--watching his wartime passion of shipbuilding morph into a passenger-service partnership with the defeated Germans who had founded the Hamburg-Amerika Line. While Averell jumped from one avocation to another, he left Walker in daily charge of W.A. Harriman & Co. offices at 39 Broadway.

Gaston, Williams & Wigmore, 1918

Thirty-Nine Broadway is a story in itself: the ownership history of both the site and the improvements built upon it. It was reported in 1916 that a massive fight was raging between the Morgan interests and those of the Rockefellers for international trade and commerce. Morgan's forces were then camped out at the offices of Gaston, Williams and Wigmore's five-story building recently constructed at that time facing 35-39 Broadway, extending back almost 200 feet to Trinity Place.

Britain's shipping company, the Cunard Lines, was nearby at 29 Broadway, at the intersection with Morris Street. At 31-33 Broadway, between Cunard and Gaston was the Hamburg-Amerika passenger office, previously where the Russian shipping passenger service had been located.

On the northeast corner of the block in which 25 Broadway sat, in the early twentieth century, the Russian-American Line Steamship Company was located was located. By the time construction began on the Cunard Building, New York had become the largest city and busiest port in the world. 25 Broadway was built in 1920-1921 by the Twenty-five Broadway Corporation, an affiliate of Cunard Steamship Line Ltd. The building was constructed under the agreement that Cunard would be the principal occupant. 

Cunard was founded in 1840 by Novia Scotia businessman engaged in banking, lumbering, shipping, and shipbuilding, Samuel Cunard. The Cunard Company pioneered transatlantic shipping and travel. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Cunard has maintained a presence on or near Bowling Green, a park at the lowest end of Broadway. Cunard was initially based out of 4 Bowling Green, where it remained for many years. The site was known as “Steamship Row” for ticket-booking agents that were located there. 

Steamship Row was replaced by the United States Custom House in 1899-1907. Consequently, Cunard moved offices to 29 Broadway and later to 21-24 State Street before relocating its headquarters to 25 Broadway in 1925. Architect Benjamin Wistar Morris III in partnership with his former employer architecture firm Carrere & Hastings designed 25 Broadway, which was completed in 1925. In addition to Cunard, several other large businesses signed leases in the new building including the Atlantic Gulf & West Indies Steamship Lines, Merchant Shipbuilding Corporation, Consolidated Steel Corporation, and international Motor Truck Corporation. While the limestone façade is elegant, imposing, and stately, the main building’s most impressive asset is the grand ticketing hall located in the lobby, which was designed for Cunard. It is inside this lobby where passage aboard such liners as the Queen Mary and the two Queen Elizabeths was purchased.

Not long after the building was completed, Cunard suffered during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cunard merged with White Star Lines in 1934 and together the company carried over of North American passengers.

The import-export firm known as Gaston, Williams & Wigmore (GWW), with offices in the Morgan Guaranty Trust building at 140 Broadway, needed to expand because of all the commerce brought to it from the war in Europe. The partnership bought three lots on Broadway from the Hemenway estate in 1917 and turned the existing structures into one building--completed in 1918 and destined to house the Globe Steamship Corporation, which GWW owned.

However, only a year later the firm, which was heavily invested in the Russian trade, had to write off voluminous losses resulting from the Bolsheviks' revolution and the collapse of the tsarist government.