With only drive and ambition, Frank Henry Goodyear rose from a $35-per-month bookkeeper to the head of a vast lumber, coal, iron, and railroad empire.
Far from viewing Jekyll Island as a place to escape the stresses of business, Goodyear took the opportunity during afternoon drinks of scotch and soda at the Clubhouse to discuss business with "an empire builder like James J. Hill" and other financiers such as J.P. Morgan.
Goodyear's unceasing toil soon caught up with him, and in 1887 he gave his brother Charles temporary control of his business, allowing himself a well-deserved break in Europe to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. Refusing to be held back, Goodyear was once again at the helm of his empire six months later.
Goodyear and his wife Josephine only enjoyed their Italianate cottage on Jekyll Island together for one season before he died in 1907 at the age of 58, "worn out with ceaseless activity and worry."
Frank Goodyear began his career with $100, a keen business mind and an all-consuming drive to prosper. He left his heirs a $10,000,000 estate.
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Carrere & Hastings
Already building homes for the world of fashionable society, architects Carrere & Hastings came to Jekyll Island in 1903 design a winter retreat for Frank and Josephine
Goodyear.
Thomas Hastings and John Carrere met while studying in Paris, and continued their collaboration as draftsmen for McKim, Mead, and White, the most prominent architects of the 19th century. After striking out their own, the pair designed buildings in Florida and New York before winning their most famous commission, the New York Public Library, in 1897.
Having designed a home for the Goodyear family in Buffalo, NY, Carrere & Hastings were the natural choice for architects of the Goodyears' Jekyll Island cottage.
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