Business & Finance: Brady Estate

As it must to all men, Death came last week to Nicholas Frederic Brady, chairman of New York Edison Co., director of 50 other companies (mostly utilities), 'greatest lay Catholic." Probably closer to and more respected by the Vatican than any other U. S. citizen, Nicholas Brady was first in the U. S. to receive the title Ordine Supremo del Christo, a Catholic honor far more distinguished than the Laetare Medal, awarded last year to Alfred Emanuel Smith, and this year (last week) to Frederick P. Kenkel, St. Louis editor (see p. 40). The Brady donations to the Vatican were many, large, discreet. A constant visitor to his last bedside was Patrick Cardinal Hayes, who conducted the funeral service.

But though his Church was dear to him Nicholas Frederic also carefully tended the business which his father left him and which made possible all the Brady donations to that Church. It was Anthony Nicholas Brady, father of Nicholas Frederic, who founded the Brady fortune, at one time among the greatest in the U. S. Anthony, born in Lille, France, went to Troy, N. Y., in 1857, worked first in the barber shop at Albany's old Delavan House. At 19 he started a tea store, soon opened branches. His first utility interest was acquiring stock in Albany Gas Light Co. A genius for consolidation, in comparatively short time he acquired control of Manhattan utility and traction companies. In 1887 he reorganized Manhattan's elevated railway and subway systems and held until his death a majority of the stock of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Co., now Brooklyn Manhattan Transit Co. He died in 1913 of indigestion, in London, while traveling with Restaurateur Louis Sherry. He left an estate estimated at $85,000,000.

To his sons, James Cox and Nicholas Frederic, came the job of managing the estate.* No one business did Anthony leave his heirs, but stock in half a hundred companies. In No. 70 Broadway are located the offices of the A. N. Brady Estate. Here instead of Mr. Brady an entire business organization devotes itself to doing with Mr. Brady's money what he himself might have done with it were he still alive. Sufficiently vast was Mr. Brady's fortune to make his estate, like Thomas Fortune Ryan's, a business in itself. Affiliated with so many mobile companies it cannot remain dormant.

Anthony's two sons managed the estate until the death in 1927 of James Cox Brady. Thereafter and until last week Nicholas Frederic managed it virtually alone. The size and importance of the Brady estate can perhaps best be apprehended by a cursory list of the companies of which Nicholas was director. Important among these was Consolidated Gas Co. of New York (Anthony, long interested in Con. Gas, was largely responsible for the installation there of his friend George Bruce Cortelyou as president) and Chrysler Corp. (When Walter P. Chrysler was founding his since famed company it was Brady estate money which practically financed his project.) Other companies of which Nicholas was a director were Anaconda Copper Mining Co., Chili Copper Co., Union Carbide and Carbon Corp., Mohawk-Hudson Power Corp. and dozens of power and light companies mostly in New York State and in Japan.