Estates

Morris & Essex Kennel Club Dog Show ~ Redux

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Since its commemorative reincarnation a decade ago, the Morris and Essex Kennel Club dog show has become a modern classic with a serious nod to its traditional roots. A new book just published, The Golden Age of Dog Shows: Morris & Essex Kennel Club, 1927-1957, not only celebrates those roots but raises funds to help keep the tradition alive. With a forward by William Secord, famed canine fine art historian and gallery owner, this photo-filled book promises not to disappoint.

Morris & Essex Kennel Club 1927-1957 Book Cover

Morris & Essex Kennel Club 1927-1957 Book Cover

Last month, as part of Women’s History Month, I included M&E’s founder, Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, as my nominee for important women in history. You can read the tribute below, which first appeared in my weekly column Lisa Unleashed published in The Newtown Bee on March 13, 2015:

Since 1995 U.S. Presidents have passed resolutions declaring March as Women’s History Month. According to womenshistorymonth.gov the celebration is a “tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society.”  Nature and the planet are two pretty broad categories when singling out individuals who have made an impact. Dogs are also part of nature and the canine-human bond is felt all over the planet. As such, I’d like to contribute my nominations of one woman whose commitment to ‘dogs’ have “proved invaluable to society.”

Many have called Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge the “First Lady of Dogdom” of the 20th century. Daughter of William Rockefeller Jr., as well as John D. Rockefeller, Sr.’s niece, she along with her husband, Marcellus Hartley Dodge, heir to the Remington Arms fortune, founded the Morris & Essex Kennel Club in the 1920s. When they married in 1907 at the Fifth Avenue mansion of her father in Manhattan, the newspapers called them “the richest couple in the world.”

Morris & Essex Dog Show 

Lisa & Gail show off their hats at Morris & Essex

Lisa & Gail show off their hats at Morris & Essex in October 2010

With this vast wealth each year from 1927 to 1957 Mrs. Dodge hosted the famed Morris & Essex dog show for thousands of dogs. Dozens of tents decorated the polo field of their vast estate “Giralda Farms” in Madison, New Jersey as top breeders and handlers came to exhibit their purebred dogs. For decades it was not only a valuable place to come study dogs but also a stop on the social scene. It was a special show, with Mrs. Dodge offering sterling trophies, lavish flower decorations, and the famed boxed lunch for all the exhibitors in attendance.

M&E had become the most prestigious dog show in the country, more important to some breeders and fanciers, than even Westminster, with around 4,000 dogs of all breeds in attendance. A win at M&E was a stamp of approval of a well-bred dog. For breeders, it was a paradise to come and see fine examples of dogs to study and watch as one was determining how a great dog or bitch might fit into a breeding program to improve their line.  As a dog breeder herself, Mrs. Dodge understood the importance of a gathering place to see many well-bred dogs in action together to further the sport of purebred dogs. Show fanciers in the sport had large kennels and many litters of great dogs planned for the show ring also made their way into American homes as pets.  But like all good breeders, the welfare of all dogs, whether we bred them or not, whether purebred or not, was equally important. Mrs. Dodge, herself a Best-in-Show judge at Westminster, also saw to it that those dogs less fortunate than her prized pups did not stay in that station of life for long.

St. Hubert’s Giralda – Founded in 1939 as a non-profit shelter, Mrs. Dodge wanted to not only advanced the study of breeding dogs but also to care for those injured and lost in her community. In addition, the shelter named after the patron of lost animals, at one time offered animal control services to six towns in Morris County, New Jersey. Today, the organization she founded in her backyard, is known as St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center and its expanded mission states its, “dedication to the humane treatment of animals. Its services to the community include pet adoption and animal rescue, animal assisted therapy, humane education, dog training, and pet loss support.

In 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina, St. Hubert’s agreed to take in the first of many airlifts of displaced dogs from Louisiana. As part of a team from AKC, who had funded the airlift through disaster donations, I waited at St. Hubert’s before heading to the airport to unload dogs. At one point I found myself face-to-face with some of the remaining artifacts from Mrs. Dodge’s life with dogs in a meeting room. As I glanced at trophies, books and other ephemera, I was struck by her depth of care and compassion for all dogs from show dogs to just those that needed to survive.

Many people today, including some dog show people, have no idea who Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge was, or her dedication to the welfare of all dogs. It’s heartwarming that nearly 50 years after the last Morris & Essex Dog Show, her legacy of St. Hubert’s Giralda lives on by helping a plane load of dogs who had lost their way after a devastating hurricane. Or also in 2005, the first ‘revived’ Morris & Essex dog show, held once every 5 years, would be established to keep her vision alive on the dog show front as well. This is the legacy of a great woman in history who has advanced man’s best friend and their care which in my opinion “have proved invaluable to society.”

Tobey Rimes – World’s Richest Dog or Urban Legend?

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Several years ago a New York Daily News reporter called my office and asked what I knew about the world’s richest dog, a poodle named Tobey Rimes.  His inheritance was passed down from generations of poodles descended from the original Tobey of the 1930s, owned by Ella Wendel, the last surviving heir to a vast Manhattan real estate fortune built up over two centuries alongside the Astors.

Wendel never married and lived her entire life with her siblings in a Fifth Avenue mansion, at 39th street, build by her father in 1856 surrounded by a large yard. By the early 20th Century the house had been dubbed the “House of Mystery” since the front door and first floor windows had been shuttered for more than a quarter century. By 1930, all her siblings had died and it was just Ella and her dog living in the aging four-story brick and brownstone mansion.

An Urban Legend 

Intrigued, I checked AKC pedigrees to see if there was any truth to these Tobey Rimes rumors, but without current Tobey’s owner’s name it was impossible to track. But the proliferation of misinformation still haunts online:

From MNN.com – “Ella Wendel’s dog: $92 million – Poodle Tobey Rimes inherited a staggering $92 million…  he is “the poster dog for the benefits of trust funds and compounding interest” since he descended from a poodle who got his millions from a trust of $30 million set up by Ella Wendel.”

From vice.com – “Toby Rimes: Worth $80 million – Toby’s great-great-great-dogfather, the original Toby, was the pampered poodle of crazy rich lady Ella Wendel, who left him all her money when she died in 1931. The endowment, passed from dog to dog ever since…”

From PetPlan.com – Toby Rimes the dog – £30 million – Ella Wendel originally left her pet poodle Toby £15million in 1931. Since then there have been a succession of pampered pooches, with the current heir being Toby Rimes.

World's Richest Dog?

World’s Richest Dog?

What’s The Real Story 

According to press reports as early as 1915, Ella Wendel’s little dog occupied the yard of the mansion. “In that lot are on old tree and a dog house and the sisters wait until the dark so that they may take their exercise” and not be looked upon by prying eyes from the new skyscrapers. The vacant lot used to be their grass-covered yard and some newspapers called it the “million dollar dog run” since many a developer offered that sum to purchase it, with Miss Wendel always refusing by stating that her dog needed an exercise area.

By 1930, her attorneys advised her to move since it was costing her $1,000 a day in taxes and expenses to live there. She told them it was her home and Tobey “needed a place to run around in.” So not only, did she maintain the million dollar dog run for her beloved pet, but kept an aging mansion without electricity or modern comforts just so the dog could have an indoor space as well. In addition, she had a small replica of her four-poster bed made for him as well as a dining table covered in red velvet, just like hers.

The Wendels maintained a summer home at Irvington, New York. According to the 1938 book, “I Remember,” by Jennie Prince Black, her neighbor Ella Wendel lamented to a neighbor that she was upset because, “The little dog has a stone in his foot.” He suggested that she get her driveway paved and then the stones would not be a problem to the dog. A local business did the work and presented her with a $20,000 bill for the driveway work from the house to the gate.

On March 15, 1931 Ella Wendel died. The next day The New York Times reported that “Tobey, a fat white poodle, lay beside the coffin” in the House of Mystery.  At one point Tobey followed the clergyman into the dining room where he went to put on his vestments, studied him for a while, decided he was friendly and went back to his post at the bottom of his master’s coffin.

“What will become of the dog. Tobey, who was not settled last night,” the reporter asked. Later The Times stated, “His little bed and little table were removed. He had been assigned to the kitchen, where three servants, left as caretakers in the bleak house, took care of him.”

The Passing of Tobey 

Tobey lived another 18 months while the executors probated the will and readied the mansion for demolition. His death was widely reported on Oct. 5, 1933.  Reports said he had become ‘snappish’ and ill. The statement from the executors read, “It was necessary last week to have a skilled veterinarian bring the dog’s life to a painless end. In natural course, he could not have lived much longer.*** The executors have followed Miss Ella’s wishes as to the disposal of the dog, and he now sleeps peacefully alongside his predecessors.” He was buried in a green plot, behind the summer home in Irvington, N.Y. along with his predecessors, all poodles and all named Tobey.

The Medina Daily Journal read: “With the closing of the Wendel Mansion on Fifth Avenue recently, that the “richest dog in the world” is dead. Toby, a French poodle,  occupied a prominent place in the spotlight when his mistress, Ella Wendel, died in 1931, leaving an estate of $100,000,000. It was said Wendel lavished more affection on the dog than any other living human.Toby had his own bed, a velvet-covered dining table, and a plot of ground to play in, which his mistress declined an offer more than one million dollars, “because it was Toby’s exercise place.” Painlessly destroyed, the little dog sleeps in the grounds of the Wendel summer home in Irvington, NY. in accordance with the last will of his mistress.”

It seems fitting that Miss Ella was the last of her line and well as her poodle Tobey. I think the modern day Tobey Rimes is made up by mixing historical fact with rumor. Whatever the truth, there is never any mention in press reports of the day that the dog got any money, but perhaps that her mansion was made available for him to live in until he died before it would be given to Drew University, one of 14 major beneficiaries. Here’s one clue: Mrs. Black in her memoir claims it was the same dog (with the stone in his foot) that held up the sale of the Fifth Avenue property because, “Miss Wendel insisted that her pet must have a place in which to exist.”

Behind Estate Gates

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Today is the 111th anniversary of the birth of my grandfather – Bülow Waldemar Nelson. He grew up on the Meriwether estate in Pocantico Hills, New York. Meriwether was next door to Kykuit which was owned by the richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller. My grandfather chronicled his life as a chauffeur to the wealthy from the 1920s Jazz age through the Great Depression of the 1930s. He lived on various iconic Westchester County properties like Weskora, Beechwood and the Sleepy Hollow Country Club. Eventually he was promoted from chauffeur to superintendent of an enchanted – some would say haunted by the tales of Washington Irving – estate called Zeeview-on-Hudson. I personally picked up his story when I was a little girl growing up on the habitat of the headless horseman now called Belvedere.

Zeeview (later Belvedere) Estate Gate - front entrance to the habitat of the headless horseman and the haunt of Rip Van Winkle

Zeeview (later Belvedere) Estate Gate – front entrance to the habitat of the headless horseman and the haunt of Rip Van Winkle

During ‘Papa’s’ 81 years he collected family photos, postcards, letters, ephemera, news clippings, and books about his life and times. He hand wrote pages and pages of personal recollections along with countless stories told to generations. Come with me as I follow my family through a century filled with happiness and heartaches serving the rich while living behind estate gates.

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My great-grandparents had sailed to America from different villages in Sweden in the 1880s. Their names had changed along the way from Oskar Alfred Nilsson to Oscar Nelson and Alma Karoline Pettersson to Alma Peterson. After meeting in Englewood, New Jersey, the came to New York City to find jobs in the late 1890s. They married on Dec. 2, 1902 in New York City. And a little over a year later, in the early morning hours of January 4, 1904, Alma gave birth to their first child, Bulow.

Oscar Nelson was employed as a coachman by David Meriwether Milton, a direct descendent from Meriwether Lewis on his mother’s side. He was a successful attorney in New York City and had a ‘country estate’ named ‘Meriwether’ in Pocantico Hills, New York. The Miltons lived across the street from John D. Rockefeller and his family. By 1904, his estate, Kykuit, was still under transition from a small private home to one of the most famous homes in the world.

The Nelson family lived in the 6-room coachman’s cottage near the stables. The simple house had running water and was supplied by the estate with all the coal, wood, oil, and milk they needed. Oscar Nelson tended to three horses and their carriages, sleighs, wagons, and plows. The barn also had running water. Besides the care of the horses, one or two for pulling carriages and one for tilling the fields, he would drive Mr. Milton and his family around the small hamlet to visit his neighbors, take him to the train station each morning for work in the city, or into the city to pick up provisions, dry goods and sundries for the estate. Alma, while tending to her new baby, would also cook for the estate staff and tend to the flocks of geese, chickens and ducks, and help with milking cows, tending the vegetable garden, and mending clothes. It was into this bucolic estate, still run like a self-sufficient 19th century home of a robber baron a few miles from the Hudson River that my grandfather took his first breath.

Bulow in a wicker pram as a baby

Bulow in a wicker pram as a baby

Several photos found among my grandfather’s belongings are his first known photograph of him taken as a two-year-old sitting in the ubiquitous white lace dress with lace collar worn by all babies of the era (see featured photo). The date 1906 is scrawled on the back in my grandfather’s hand. The studio imprint on the front – Rud. Bachmann, 6E. 14th St., New York, may be the first place my grandfather ever visited in New York City, a place he would come to know intimately in his career as a chauffeur. But for his early childhood he would be the son of a coachman.

Young Bulow outside the coachman's cottage on Meriwether in Pocantico Hills, New York

Young Bulow outside the coachman’s cottage on Meriwether in Pocantico Hills, New York circa 1906