New York School of Interior Design: The Building: The Man

Known as "The Tin Plate King," Daniel G. Reid came from modest beginnings to eventually amass a fortune of around $50,000,000.  As a teenager, he got a job as a clerk for the Second National Bank of Richmond in his Indiana hometown.  Gradually, he worked his way up the company ladder to become Vice President, during which time he helped create the American Tin Plate Company.  This was eventually absorbed into The United States Steel Corporation; around the same time, he became head of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, overall emerging a very wealthy man.  After moving to New York City, he divided his time between his 5th Avenue mansion and Hudson River estate.  He married 3 times (twice widowed, once divorced), and had one son, Frank, who died young, and one daughter, Rhea.  He died on January 17, 1925 at age 66, and was buried in the Reid Mausoleum in Richmond, Indiana.

Visit these online resources:

• From the Morrison-Reeves Library: a brief biography.
• Reid lived across from Central Park at 875 5th Avenue, which has since been demolished.  But, you can learn a bit about his other residences: the Hudson River estate Richmond Hill, or Dunnellen Hall, a 28-room neo-Jacobean mansion he built for his daughter as a wedding present.

Digitized newspapers are full of information about Mr. Reid's financial and romantic entanglements (search his name as "Daniel G. Reid" or "Daniel Gray Reid"):

• Chronicling America (from Library of Congress)
• Newspapers at the NYPL (available primarily on-site at the NYPL)

For print materials, see also:

• Daniel Gray Reid, in Harrison, Mitchell Charles. Prominent and progressive Americans: an encyclopædia of contemporaneous biography. New York: New York Tribune, 1902.
• Daniel G. Reid, in Biographical and genealogical history of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin Counties, Indiana. Chicago: Chicago Lewis, 1899.