Walkabout: Mr. Seney's Hospital, Part 3

(The Methodist Hospital aka the Seney Hospital, in 1916)

What do you do when there’s a run on your bank, forcing you to resign, another bank you own a quarter of the shares in, goes belly-up the same day, contractors on the hospital you are building for charity demand payment, the press is calling for investigations, and all of your personal creditors want their loans re-paid now? If you were George I. Seney, and the year was 1885, you’d head to Europe for a few months of R and R. This is exactly what he did, following his wife and some of his children, to less stressful places than Wall Street, and Brooklyn. Many of his critics thought he was gone for good, and like many other failed and dishonest public figures, had run away from his problems and responsibilities. But George Seney had no intention of running. He’d be back, and his reputation and fortunes would rise again. After all, there was still much to be done.

The early fortunes of George Seney can be read in Part 1, and the chaos of Wall Street, in the Panic of 1884, and its effects on the Seney fortune can be read in Part 2. His resignation from the presidency of the Metropolitan Bank, and the subsequent investigations into his risky investment strategies affected everything around him. He had invested the assets of a smaller bank, the Atlantic Bank, based in Brooklyn, along with that of Metropolitan’s and his own personal fortune, in what turned out to be very risky ventures, and the crash of the market in May of 1884 wiped them all out. He had taken out a personal loan of $140K from the Fireman’s Trust, of which he was also a trustee. They only had $150K in their coffers, and after the crash, called in the loan. He couldn’t pay, and they too, folded. He had to stop his contributions to the building fund of his Seney Hospital, which was in the midst of being constructed in Park Slope. He sold several parcels of land, one in the Heights, on Hicks Street, where he had planned to build a house, and a block long group of lots on 7th Avenue, between Union and President, in Park Slope, which had originally been the site for the hospital. By the spring of 1885, George Seney put on the auction block his entire collection of paintings, over 120 pieces of valuable contemporary European and American works. The sale drew much publicity, and took several days to complete. He raised almost $55K the first night, and at the end of sales, had made close to $405,000, only 65% of what he had paid for the collection over the years. All of the money went to his creditors.

The next big ticket item to go was the house at 4 Montague Terrace. He had turned over the property, 68′ x 200′ deep, overlooking the river, over to the Metropolitan Bank, as partial repayment of bad investments. The house had cost him $150K, and the bank got it, along with the furniture. Because of the price ($110K) and the size, the house sat unsold until 1886, when it was bought for $100K. At that time, it was the largest selling price of any private house in Brooklyn. At his doctor’s orders, George Seney left for Europe in the summer of 1885. His friends and admirers, such as James Mumford, the architect of the Seney Hospital, were sure he’d be back. Less charitable folk, suggested in print that Seney’s bountiful charity was the result of his assuaging the guilt of the rich, and he should have paid more attention to his own money before giving it all away.

In spite of the nay-sayers, George Seney came back to America, living in his summer home in Bernardsville, NJ, and in the course of two years, quietly paid off all of his creditors, by making another fortune from his railroad business connections. In July of 1886, he reimbursed the stockholders of the failed Atlantic Bank for their losses, and paid back the Fireman’s Insurance Company the entire $140K, plus interest, thus paying back the last of his Brooklyn debt. The Brooklyn Eagle congratulated him in an editorial, saying, This recovery implies not that he has forced a shady compromise with his creditors, or adopted any of the devices by which men have been known to grow richer by failure, but that he has honestly and honorably discharged his obligations and will be able to look every fellow man in the face as owing him nothing. He was able to buy back the house on Montague Terrace. He then set about amassing an entirely new collection of paintings, this time concentrating on American contemporary painters. George Seney was back!

In 1885, the work on the Seney Hospital had been halted, due to lack of Seney funds, and the site lay abandoned for two years, while more funds were raised. In 1887, $70K had been raised by the Methodist Church and private donors, enabling the construction to continue on one wing. In the fall of 1887, that wing, called the Western Pavilion, opened with room for 70 patients. The building had a state of the art ventilation system which pumped fresh air throughout. It had a shiny soapstone plaster finish on all of the walls, ash woodwork, and seasoned southern pine floors. It was lauded as the most up to date and modern hospital in New York. George Seney had previously donated $200K to begin the hospital, and would return to eventually donate another $200,000 dollars, allowing the Methodist Hospital to open all of its wings, the nurses’ school, and other buildings.

In 1887, he also donated 20 paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which still has most of them. By 1890, he had sold the Montague Terrace house to Edward Litchfield and his wife, and divided his time between his apartment at the Grand Hotel, in Manhattan, and his country home in New Jersey, where he kept a stable of over 100 thoroughbred horses. He began to have health problems that year, and was diagnosed with progressive heart disease. He proceeded to give away another pile of money, giving generously to the Brooklyn branch of the YMCA, to Negro education in the South, the Methodist Orphan Asylum, his Methodist Church in Bernardsville, and always to his alma mater, Wesleyan University, On April 7th 1893, George Seney died in his rooms at the Grand Hotel. He was surrounded by his wife, Phoebe, and his nine children. He would be remembered for his generosity and for his rise, fall, and final successful rise again. He almost singlehandedly funded the Methodist Episcopal Hospital, which sadly, no longer even bears his name. The buildings he paid for are long gone, but the important hospital still remains, now NY Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn. His promise to build a hospital that would care for anyone who came to its doors had been fulfilled, and his legacy of charity and public works would live on in his children.

All of his nine children married and had families, but one of his daughters stands out. At 18, Mary Seney married Rumsey Sheldon, a Manhattan banker. That year was 1881, the same year her father bought the land, and donated the first $100K to build the hospital. She would see his empire crumble, and be reborn. After her father’s death in 1893, she continued many of his financial commitments to the charities he had embraced. By 1908, she was 45, lived in Murray Hill, had two daughters, and had watched her high-level Republican husband work behind the scenes to put a Republican governor and two Republican presidents in office. Her love of music and her social and political savvy help her in her fight to reorganize the NY Philharmonic into the modern institution it is today. She and her powerful allies fought critics, including the highly influential Walter Damrosch, and other people who thought rich women should just sit in the audience and shut up. Under her leadership, with some brilliant maneuvering on her part, in 1909, the Philharmonic would hire Gustav Mahler as their conductor, beginning the process of shaping them into one of the best and most important orchestras in the world. Today the Mahler years are legendary, cut short by his death, at 50, in 1911. Mary Seney Sheldon would become the first woman president of the NY Philharmonic in 1912, an occurrence that wouldn’t happen again for 70 years. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to lead for very long. After a long illness, Mary died in 1913, only a month shy of her 50th birthday. She left behind an orchestra financially able to continue the traditions begun by Mahler, and an artistic legacy represented by the Mahler/Philharmonic bond that still resonates today, bringing the enjoyment of music to millions. Her father would have been proud.

(Photo: NY Methodist Hospital – George Ingraham Seney)

(Photo: Wikipedia – 18 year old Mary Seney Sheldon in 1881)