http://www.cooganresearchgroup.com/crg/index.htm

14 October 2012

COOGAN story 

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appearing in "New York Tribune" [NY], 30 JUN 1903, PAGE 6:

COOGANS GET WHITEHALL
King Estate in Newport Disposed of at
Mortgage Sale for $42,100

[by telegraph to the Tribune]

NEWPORT, R.I. - June 29 - Whitehall, the David H. King estate, at the 
corner of Catherine-st. and Rhode Island-ave., was sold at mortgage
sale today at noon.  It was reported some days ago that the idea of 
having a public sale was abandoned, as James J. Coogan, of New York,
had purchased the place.  The rumor was founded on the fact that Mr.
Coogan was interested in the property and wished to buy it, but all
arrangements having been made for the sale, it was necessary for it
to take place.  The purchaser was Mr. Harriet H. Coogan, wife of James
J. Coogan, and the price was $42,100.

The mortgage of $50,000 was held by Brown University, and the expenses
were $2000, thereby making the loss to Brown of nearly [$10,000 ?].
Henry F. Eldridge, in behalf of Brown University, bid $42,000 but Mr.
Coogan raised the amount by $100 and the sale was closed in his favor.

Mr. and Mrs. Louis L. Lorillard occupied Whitehall several years, and
shortly after their going away last fall, the furnishings were removed
from the house.  Mr. and Mrs. Coogan, who heretofore spent their 
summers at Narragansett Pier, will come to Newport in three weeks.  
The intervening time will be taken up with the necessary preparations
of Whitehall.

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1903-06-30/ed-1/seq-6

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appearing in "?", [*], PAGE ?:
[* note - event took place 16 JUN 1910 - story written years later]

MANSION LEFT TO ROT FOR 35 YEARS BY WOMAN WHO WAS 
SNUBBED BY NEIGHBORS

[photo; caption: "MANSION that Mrs. Harriet Coogan bought for $200,000 
in Newport, R.I., during the height of its elegance"]

By The Rev. WEBB GARRISON

Not one of the 300 bluebloods invited to Jessie Coogan's debutante
party showed up, so her snubbed mother secluded herself in a hotel
suite and let their $200,000 mansion stand empty and rotting for the
next 35 years.

The mother, a descendant of a pioneer New York family, had been born
to wealth and position.  But Harriet Gardiner Lynch stunned her 
family and social set in 1883 by marrying James J. Coogan, a Bowery 
merchant and small-time Democratic politician.

So, when the Coogans bought a mansion that was called Whitehall, in
snooty Newport, R.I., in 1901, they were looked upon as brash 
upstarts.

After nearly a decade had passed, Mrs. Coogan apparently felt the '
social ice had melted sufficiently for the family to make its grand
entrance into capital-S Society by throwing an elaborate coming out
party for daughter Jessie.

On the evening of June 16, 1910, waiters stationed themselves at 
punch bowls while an orchestra tuned its instruments.  The Coogans 
turned out in specially bought finery to await the arrival of 
Newport's finest, all of whom had been invited.

They waited and waited, until by midnight it was clear no one was
going to come.

"What are we going to do?" asked Coogan.

"Do!" retorted his enraged wife.  "We're going to leave and never 
come back.  Whitehall can rot on its foundations for all I care!"

She kept her word.  As the years passed, the empty and crumbling
mansion became Newport's town eyesore - Mrs. Coogan's revenge upon 
the town which had refused her socially.  Mrs. Coogan did nothing 
for the property other than pay its real estate taxes.

***********

Not until 1945 did her son convince Mrs. Coogan to heed the pleas of
Newport residents and have the mansion razed.

Mrs. Coogan, meanwhile, gradually retreated from the world to the 
point that few of her 15 grandchildren ever saw her after her 
husband's death in 1915.

On Sept. 6, 1931, she left her Fifth Avenue home in New York City 
and moved into a simple apartment at the Biltmore Hotel where she 
was to stay until her death at 86 in 1947.

For the 16 years she lived in the suite, waiters delivered three 
meals a day but were forbidden to enter the rooms.  Mrs. Coogan became 
one of the most famous hotel recluses in the world.

According to her newspaper obituary, the last person to see Mrs. 
Coogan on the street was a hotel doorman who hurried to her with an 
umbrella as she waited for a cab one stormy night in 1940.

"When I took her arm," he said, "she gave me a good scolding.  'Don't
you dare touch me," she said, "I'll go my own way.'"

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appearing in "Newport Mercury" [RI], 16 OCT 1926:

...

...regarding the condition of the old stable on the... ...Coogan...
..."Whitehall."  Neighbors had completed of the structure as...

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appearing in "Time Magazine", 29 SEP 1941, PAGE 1:

NEW HETTY GREEN

A furor in Newport over the dilapidation of Mrs. James Jay Coogan's
empty mansion on aristocratic Catherine Street turned the spotlight on 
one of the world's wealthiest recluses: for 25 years Mrs. Coogan, now 
well into her eighties, has seldom left her Manhattan hotel suite in 
the daytime, but each night at 9 o'clock she goes down in the freight 
elevator heavily veiled, drives to her cubbyhole office in a loft 
building, puts in five hours administering her real-estate fortune 
(which includes Coogan's Bluff, The Polo Grounds where the Giants 
play).  She and her daughter, Jessie, do all the chores about their 
suite, which neither maid nor bellboy may enter.  She never answers 
letters, for years has hardly glanced at a newspaper.  But before her 
Tammany husband died in 1915 whe spent eight years vainly trying to 
crash Newport society.  The book found on her bedroom table in Newport 
was Burke's Peerage - for 1910.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,766156,00.html

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appearing in "Newport Daily News" [RI], 15 FEB 1956:

...

...Work was started on demolishing the ruins of the Coogan residence
at the corner of...

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