Gerard Beekman

By inheritance, as by name and by the affiliations of his life, Gerard Beekman was yet another of that race, growing rarer as the years roll on; an actual New Yorker. Born at “Mount Pleasant,” his family’s Knickerbocker country estate on what is now Fiftieth Street and First Avenue—where Nathan Hale was imprisoned before his execution and where André used to dine with his fellow-officers—Beekman was the direct descendant of well-to-do Dutch settlers who came to New Amsterdam in 1645 and who gave their name to the Beekman Street which we know in lower New York to-day. He never lost his sense of belonging to the city’s first inhabitants. Educated for the law and busied most of his life with the management of his family’s estate, he interested himself as a matter of course in the Holland Society and the New York Historical Society, and during forty years did useful service as a trustee of Columbia University.

The appeal which came to Mr. Beekman, perhaps from his summer home at Oyster Bay, was of the sea. He was an enthusiastic and persistent yachtsman. His love of this fascinating sport will be remembered by his fellow members of the New York Yacht Club and the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club. Even in his old age those who were admitted to his intimacy knew with what fondness he looked upon the walls of his private sitting room, with pictures of the various craft with whose qualities and achievements he was familiar.

Alexander Dana Noyes
1919 Century Association Yearbook