The Brokaws Clockwise from top left: Clare Booth Luce was married to George Tuttle Brokaw from 1923 to 1929; Mr. and Mrs. Howard Crosby Brokaw with daughters Julia, Edna, and Peggy; the Brokaw home at 984 Fifth Avenue; Lucile Brokaw, wife of Irving Brokaw; Alfred “Chappy” Morris, a descendant of the Brokaws; William Gould Brokaw founded Brokaw Brothers Clothing.
Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary and later ambassador to the Court of St. James under Grover Cleveland and secretary of state under Teddy Roosevelt. The Hays were Clevelanders and old friends of the Paynes. Helen and Payne Whitney had two children: Joan, born in 1903, and John, or “Jock,” born in 1904. They were brought up at 972 Fifth Avenue in a house that still stands, designed by Stanford White and given as a wedding present by Uncle Oliver. In 1917, Oliver Payne died, leaving the bulk of his estimated $178 million fortune to his favored nephew. Thanks to his uncle, Payne Whitney lived a “gentleman’s life,” raising thoroughbreds and maintaining estates in Manhasset, Long Island; Louisville, 106 QUEST
Kentucky; and Thomasville, Georgia. Well-liked, he was a frequent—often anonymous—contributor to educational and charitable institutions, which included Yale, New York Hospital, and New York Public Library, to which he contributed the enormous sum of $12 million in 1923. He died young—in 1927 at age 51— leaving an estate of $127 million, then the largest ever probated in the U.S. Helen Hay Whitney became the exemplar of “Old Society,” albeit quietly, eschewing fanfare, splitting her time between 972 Fifth Avenue and Greentree, the family estate in Manhasset, until her death in 1944. In her later years, she was an obsessive baseball fan who liked nothing better than sitting and listening to the games on the radio. It rubbed off;
her daughter Joan Whitney Payson was the founder of the New York Mets. The third generation of Whitneys, with Cornelius Vanderbilt, his sister Flora, their cousins Joan and Jock, were glamorous New York socialites with their own racing stables, country estates, houses in town, multiple business and cultural interests, and celebrated friends. Jock was the quintessential “gentleman” of the 20th century: rich, fun-loving, and generous. After World War II, he started a company to invest in start-ups created by returning vets. The project was initially called Adventure Capital, from which the term “venture capital” was sprung. In the 1930s, Jock married the Philadelphia beauty Elizabeth “Liz” Altemus and formed a production