4/6/13 – Drinks at the Campbell Apartment with Amy and David

Visiting the Campbell Apartment @ Grand Central Terminal had been on our ‘to do list’ for some time and so, when the chance came to meet up for drinks with Amy (Steve and Wendy Powles’ daughter) and her partner David Leroy (both from WA) we jumped at the chance. 

The Campbell Apartment, contrary to its name, was never an actual apartment in which people lived. Instead it was once the office (and business entertainment space) of American financier John W. Campbell, who was a director and major shareholder of the New York Central Railway.

The 3,500-square-foot (330 m2) space was first leased to Campbell in 1923 by William Kissam Vanderbilt II, whose family had built Grand Central Terminal. The space is actually just a single room 60 feet (18 m) long by 30 feet (9.1 m) wide with a 25-foot (7.6 m) ceiling and an enormous faux fireplace in which Campbell kept a steel safe. (To this day the safe, with Campbell’s name inscribed on the front, is still there). At the time it was the largest ground floor space in Manhattan, Campbell commissioned Augustus N. Allen, an architect known for designing estates on Long Island and town houses in Manhattan, to build an opulent office, transforming the room into a 13th-century Florentine palace with a hand-painted plaster of paris ceiling and leaded windows. It also featured a quatrefoil designed mahogany balcony, that still exists today.

One of the most striking features of Campbell’s original office space was a Persian carpet that took up the entire ground floor and was said to have cost $300,000 at the time, or roughly $3.5 million today. Campbell added a piano and pipe organ, and at night turned his office into a reception hall, entertaining 50 or 60 friends who came to hear famous musicians play private recitals. He had a permanent butler named Stackhouse. After Campbell’s death in 1957, the rug and other furnishings disappeared from his office and the space eventually became a signalman’s office and later a closet at Grand Central, where the transit police stored guns and other equipment. There was also a small jail, in the area of the present-day bar.

After falling into disrepair, the space was restored and renovated in 1999. The walls and ceiling were brought back to their former glory and the original steel safe, once hidden behind a wall, now sits in the massive fireplace as a reminder of Campbell's wealth. The new bar is done in the same quatre-foil mahogany style as the balcony. The renovation cost an estimated $1.5 million. A later 2006 renovation replaced a largely blue palette with a largely red one, including new carpet, bar stools and chairs. To avoid closing for even one night it took place in less than 12 hours and cost $350,000.

Finally, as I have been talking today about Campbell and Vanderbilt, two of the great American business tycoons of the early twentieth century, I thought it might be appropriate to close this entry with a brief discussion of the concept of ‘scientific philanthropy’. While we were in the Hamptons, as one does, we read the WSJ (Wall Street Journal) Money Summer 2013 Magazine and there was one article in the magazine that caught my eye. I had been struggling for some time with the fact that it seems to almost always be the case here that those who were the possessors of significant wealth get to choose what and more importantly who will benefit from their philanthropy. Eg there is a couple in NYC who give $50 million annually to the Met Opera when there are people sleeping on the streets. I am happy to be wrong if this couple also gives to other charities, and I hope that they do, but I was impressed with this WSJ article about the ‘new wealthy’ who give according to the needs of others not according to their own tastes and interests.

The John and Laura Arnold Foundation is an example of this new thinking. As a natural gas trader Arnold is widely considered to be just about the ‘smartest guy in the room’. And he now uses his meticulous research skills to focus on public policy problems that lead to ‘moral inefficiencies’. The Arnold’s focus on funding projects where mathematical formula show a strong likelihood of achieving most amount of good for the least amount of money expended. These are projects that often will not be supported as they will make little or no profit and involve some risk.



For example the Arnolds hired the former NJ District Attorney Anne Milgram and her team to analyse the criminal justice system and used the empirical data they produced to drive solutions about local government procedures (eg last year NY spent $9 billion to keep non-violent pre-trial defendants behind bars even though they pose little threat to society). I was amused to read that, according to the Arnold’s, “baseball teams know more about their back up short stop than judges know about pre-trial defendants before locking them up at great cost to society and the accused.”  Using data from 1.5 million cases, the Arnolds have devised a risk assessment tool for judges to trial in three jurisdictions this year. This is a classic example of ‘relatively small amounts of money’ being used to make big differences to the community. They are also looking into pension reform and education. Last year the Arnolds gave $423.4 million to various avenues of research into these problems. Like Warren Buffet, who has now joined their think tank, I was impressed with this new brand of ‘scientific philanthropy’.

Our Gym Instructor Ian