The Woolworth Mansion: Fortune Lost in a Retail Empire’s Shadow

Описание: The tragic rise and fall of America's Woolworth fortune—from five-cent stores to marble palaces, suicide, and financial ruin. Inside Frank Woolworth's journey from poverty-stricken farm boy to retail empire builder, the construction of his spectacular Winfield Hall mansion in Glen Cove, and the curse that haunted his family for generations. Discover how the Woolworth five-and-dime revolutionized American shopping, why his daughter Edna Woolworth Hutton took her own life at the Plaza Hotel, and how heiress Barbara Hutton squandered forty million dollars through seven marriages to fortune hunters. Witness the dark side of the Gilded Age, the mysterious fires that destroyed Woolworth properties, the bizarre iron-masked coat of arms that symbolized family dysfunction, and the lonely death of America's "poor little rich girl" with only three thousand dollars remaining.

A gripping exploration of how the Woolworth retail dynasty built magnificent mansions but couldn't buy happiness, the cover-ups behind Edna's suicide, the mansions that couldn't find buyers, and the ultimate collapse of the Woolworth Company that once defined American retail. See how Frank Woolworth's Cathedral of Commerce became a monument to lost fortune, family tragedy, and the devastating price of the American dream.