And a first rate example of how technology changes valuations.
From Town & Country, September 6, 2016:
The flagship gets a makeover that ensures it will be a destination for the next generation of ingenues and princesses-to-be.
Looking through the archive room in Town & Country's New York offices—a narrow library stacked with bound volumes of the magazine's 170-year history—I could find no mention of the juiciest real estate deal of 1917. Property transactions have been on my mind, partly because I have just lived through one of my own, in Manhattan, but also because the high drama of the current market inspired our new monthly column, Property Values.This 1917 landmark closing would have been perfect for it: American tycoon Morton F. Plant, in an effort to please his beautiful young second wife, Maisie, trades his Fifth Avenue mansion for $100 and a strand of pearls that Maisie had seen in a shop window and admired rather aggressively. They were, to be clear, natural pearls, the rarest variety, and today they'd be worth about $16 million....
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The widespread adoption of farmed (cultured) pearls put a cap on any bidding pressure all along the price points, up to and including the top-end, so you didn't get the type of appreciation you saw in, say, colored fancy diamonds.
And on the other side of the trade, the evolution of Manhattan around the house...well, for that we go to one of the internet's tiny treasures, Daytonian in Manhattan (also on blogroll at right):
May 10, 2010
The House that a Necklace Bought -- The Morton Plant Mansion
At the turn of the last century Fifth Avenue in midtown was known as "Millionaires' Row." Block after block of mansions, each attempting to outdo the other, lined the avenue from the 30's north to Cornelius Vanderbilt's massive chateau at 57th Street. In 1902, following the demolition of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, William K. Vanderbilt offered the corner lot at 52nd Street and 5th Avenue for sale.
Morton F. Plant, the son of railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant, purchased the land, agreeing to Vanderbilt's stipulation that it could not be used for commercial purposes for 25 years.
Plant commissioned English-born architect Robert W. Gibson to design his residence. Construction would take three years to complete; but the results were dazzling. Gibson produced a marble and granite Italian Renaissance mansion; one of the most tasteful and elegant on the avenue.
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| photo by Wurts Bros., from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York |
With its entrance on 52nd Street, Plant's house turned its shoulder to the many Vanderbilt family houses that clustered around it. Over the doorway a stone balcony projected under a classic pediment. A substantial stone balustrade surmounted the cornice, under which an ornate frieze was pierced by four-paned windows. The Plants established themselves as major players in the Fifth Avenue neighborhood.
In the meantime, things were changing downtown. The brownstone mansions of John Jacob and William Astor at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street had been replaced by the combined Waldorf and Astoria hotels. Commerce was creeping up the avenue. By the time Morton and Nellie Plant moved into their new home, wealthy residents in the 30's were already beginning to abandon their homes and flee northward.
Morton was a yachtsman and owner of baseball teams in his spare time. He and his wife hosted elegant dinner parties and social events in the mansion until 1913. On August 8 of that year Nellie Plant, Morton's wife of 26 years, died. Shortly thereafter the 61-year old Plant met the 31-year old Mae Caldwell Manwaring -- wife of Selden B. Manwaring.
In May of 1914, not ten months after the death of his wife, Plant announced his engagement to Mae who had obtained a divorce the previous month. A month later the couple was married at Plant's immense Groton, Connecticut estate. Mae was, reportedly, pleased with her wedding gift of $8 million.
By 1917, with the country having entered World War I, Morton and Mae (she preferred to be called Maisie) became concerned about the stores and hotels that were inching closer and closer. Despite the restrictions in his contract with Vanderbilt, Plant began construction on a French Renaissance palace at 5th Avenue and 86th Street, designed by Guy Lowell.
In the meantime Maisie Plant was window shopping. Pierre Cartier had opened a New York branch of his Paris jewelry store, and there she fell in love with a double-stranded Oriental pearl necklace with a $1 million price tag (equal to about $16 million today).
Before the advent of cultured pearls, flawless pearls were more valuable than diamonds. In Edwardian society a woman's social status was often measured by the length of her pearl ropes....
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