Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo

Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo (May 12, 1842 – May 27, 1914) was an American heiress known for commissioning the Rhinelander Mansion located in Manhattan at 867 Madison Avenue on the south-east corner of 72nd Street, designed in the 1890s by Kimball & Thompson and completed in 1898. According to most sources, she never lived in the mansion, but chose to reside with her sister in a row house across the street from the mansion. and Laura Virginia Rhinelander, who did not marry.

Her maternal grandparents were U.S. Representative Jotham Post Jr. and his second wife, Magdalen (née Blaau) Post. Rhinelander's great-great grandfather, Philip Jacob Rhinelander, was a German-born French Huguenot who immigrated to America in 1686 following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and persecution of Protestants in France. He settled in the newly formed French Huguenot community of New Rochelle, where he amassed considerable property holdings that became the basis for the Rhinelander family's wealth. The Rhinelander family acquired farm property on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the 1700s. This appreciated in value with the expansion of urban development.

Personal life On June 6, 1876, she married stockbroker Francis William "Frank" Waldo (1836–1878), despite the fact that he had been bankrupted during the Panic of 1873. In May 1877, before Frank's untimely death in 1878,

In 1882, Waldo received an inheritance valued at $360,000 (equivalent to $ today) that consisted largely of real estate.

Gertrude Waldo died of apoplexy on May 27, 1914. After a funeral at the Hotel Netherland, she was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. In 1915, The New York Times reported that at the time of her death, she was over $135,000 (equivalent to $ today) in debt, consisting primarily of a pair of loans she received from the L. V. Rhinelander Estate.

72nd Street residence

In 1882 Waldo bought a piece of property located at the corner of 72nd Street and Madison Avenue, but did not develop the site immediately. The houses were never occupied during Waldo's life, but the reason for this is unknown. The other mansion was sold in 1912.

The Rhinelander Mansion was vacant until 1921 when it was subdivided into commercial use on the street level and two apartments on the four floors above. It now houses the flagship men's clothing store of Polo Ralph Lauren that took 18 months to renovate in 1986.