Library of Congress
Hand-colored lithograph print titled“ The False Start,” showing Jerome Park in the West Bronx, 1868.
Leonard Jerome appears to have been a supremely self-confident“ plunger.” Biographer Anita Leslie claimed,“ He used to paralyze his friends by the magnitude of his transactions.” Yet he also appears to have been able to spot trouble. During the summer of 1857, in response to a broker’ s question regarding the prospects of the Ohio Life and Trust Company, Leonard was quoted as saying he wouldn’ t buy the shares at half the current price. A month or two later, Ohio Life would declare a very visible and market-shaking bankruptcy.
Clara convinced Leonard to spend 1858 in Paris in an apartment on the Champs- Élysées. Clara was fascinated by Emperor Louis Napoleon’ s court, and specifically the Empress Eugenie. Leonard found the court admirable but complained that the horses available for riding were expensive and mediocre.
On their return to New York, Leonard built Clara her mansion. Positioned overlooking Madison Square Park, the façade of red brick and white marble was described by Anita Leslie as“ a strawberry pie amidst rows of chocolate blancmanges.” One wing of the structure would contain an ornate horse stable paneled in black walnut and above the stable a 600-seat private theater in which Leonard would indulge his passion for music and opera.
Clara and Leonard were raising four daughters( one of whom would die in childhood), and the girls inherited Leonard’ s love of music and Clara’ s love of aristocracy. Clara worried that her daughters’ musical passions were a little too pronounced for court, where technical proficiency and spirited performing were considered a bit undignified.
The Civil War years had been good ones on Wall Street— and for Leonard Jerome. Churchill biographer David Lough speculated that control of certain telegraph lines permitted Leonard to obtain battlefield news before others. What is known is that his friendship with Cornelius Vanderbilt resulted in concurrent interests in certain railroad concerns that had the effect of doubling Leonard’ s fortune from $ 3 to $ 6 million during the war. The war’ s end found Leonard Jerome a Wall Street titan, in both wealth and influence.
It was at this pinnacle that Leonard Jerome debuted his great creation, Jerome Park Racetrack in the West Bronx. The initial meeting was in September 1866, with Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant the guest of honor. It was the first such horse racing event in North America patterned after such meetings in England. Leonard hoped the park would make money but was willing to lose up to $ 25,000 / year to support the venture. Historian David Black records that he also provided that“ those who could not afford the entrance fee could witness the contests … from public ground.”
The post-war years would be financially dicey, however, as the war spending stopped and the US government revived the gold backing of the US dollar. Leonard Jerome appears to have weathered the sharp break in stock prices that followed Jay Gould’ s manipulation of the gold market in September 1869, but he had other problems.
Leonard Jerome appears to have underestimated the power of the technology that in many cases he had financed. He controlled the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, which dominated mail service between the country’ s two coasts. During the 1860s, his shares of Pacific Mail increased smartly in value. Late that decade he planned an additional issuance of shares in the firm and took a large portion of those shares himself at $ 200 apiece. The transcontinental railroad was nearing completion, however, and rail competition would soon dent the company’ s prospects. The shares of Pacific Mail did not trade at anything close to that $ 200 price. Harper’ s Weekly concluded a few years later,“ This was the turning point in his own fortune.”
Leonard does not appear to have discussed these financial reverses with the family. The two older girls were teenagers, and they spent hours each day playing piano, singing and attending the opera. The Jerome women were invited to weekend retreats with the French court and gave little thought to the bills for the required dresses and jewels. They made quite a splash wherever they went, young Jennie especially. Oxford historian and Churchill biographer Paul Johnson wrote that in London, she was“ the most desirable lady in Mayfair … not just because of the sheer physical allure of face and figure but because she looked, moved, talked, laughed and danced with almost diabolical magic.” Years later she confessed,“ I shall never get used to not being the most beautiful woman in the room.”
The Jerome women were in Paris when the French army was routed in September 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War, and they caught one of the last trains out of town. Leonard leased the mansion to the Union League Club for $ 25,000 / year and joined them. The family spent most of the next nine months in London before returning to their Parisian apartment to assess the damage. Clara heard that a mob was ransacking the Tuileries Palace she loved so dearly, and she hurried there
30 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Fall 2025 | www. MoAF. org