Henry Augustus Coit Taylor (1841-1921)

He was born in New York City and after graduating from Columbia College (1861) he worked in his father's investment bank. He became a member of the board of managers (and later a director) of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Co., and a director of the Cayuga and Susquehanna Railroad. In addition, he was a director of the National City Bank of New York, the New York Life Insurance & Trust Company, and the Newport, Rhode Island Trust Company. During the 1880s, he helped reorganize the Metropolitan Opera & Real Estate Company, serving as a director and Vice-President. His portrait (pictured) was painted by John Singer Sargent in 1905.

He was a close friend of Charles McKim and in 1894 commissioned his firm - McKim, Mead & White - to design his townhouse at 3 East 71st Street (see images). The firm also designed his summer home on Annandale Road in Newport, and in addition to these properties he owned "Glen Farm" on 1,500-acres in Portsmouth, Rhode Island - where he bred Guernsey cows, Percheron horses and Horned Dorset sheep - and a yacht named Wanderer. Two years after his death, his son, Moses, commissioned John Russell Pope to build the chateau-inspired manor house that is now found at Glen Farm. In 1868, Henry Taylor married Charlotte, daughter of Daniel Butler Fearing, by whom he had three children. After she died, he married (1903) Josephine, daughter of Hezron A. Johnson. He had three children by his first wife and died with an estate valued at $36,250,000.