Steel Widow

On Saturday Jan. 15, 1916, lady-like chatter rang through the Victorian mansion at No. 856 Fifth Avenue as 24 players sat down to bridge. Over the six tables presided a plump, erect matron. When the game was over she rose, announced the prizes: one share of U. S. Steel preferred for each table. Steel preferred was $117 a share that day. The prizes totaled $702.

When newshawks heard of the party, they called up Judge Elbert H. Gary, chairman of U. S. Steel. Did he know-about it? Yes, he did. For the matron was his wife, the house his house: the Gary mansion, sanctum sanctorum of U. S. steelmen.

Judge Gary was 59 and had been chairman of U. S. Steel for four years when he married Emma Townsend Scott in a private suite at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1905. His first wife, Julia Graves of Aurora, Ill. had died three years before. His bride was 28, California-born, the divorced wife of a picture dealer. They went to the Victorian house with the gingerbread fac,ade shortly after the panic of 1907. There for nearly two decades while he ruled the destiny of Steel, she entertained the kings of industry, the royalty of Europe.

Fabulous were the stories of her housekeeping. She had a gold dining service worth $500,000 which she used for celebrities. Lesser guests ate off an equally handsome but less valuable silver set. Her objets d'art were appraised in the millions. She ran her house with the cool efficiency of a military general. All servants were carefully checked in and out of the building and a report of their movements was handed to her each morning. She supervised (but did not attend) the famed "Gary Dinners," where steelmen met to plot the course of their empires. In 1927 she entertained Queen Marie of Rumania, laying the table with her gold service. When the Queen arrived she and seven of the guests were ushered into a special dining room upstairs, while the Garys supped in the sumptuous dining room below. Whether this was the Queen's wish, no one has ever discovered. Abroad the steelmaster's wife, witty and agreeable, was received with some warmth. At home chary Manhattan matrons were more reserved.

By last week Judge Gary had been dead seven years. The Gary mansion was no more. In its place stood a modern apartment house. There last week, in a 14-room suite on the ninth floor, Death came to his widow. Mrs. Gary had fled from the house where her husband died, had lived on the Gary estate at Jericho, L. I. When the apartment house was built, she returned to the address of many memories. She lived there quietly on her share of Judge Gary's $22,000,000 estate until, seven months ago, a slow, mortal illness laid her low.

Her income from the estate will revert to Judge Gary's two daughters by his first wife: Gertrude Gary Sutcliffe of Chicago and Bertha Gary Campbell, whose husband is general counsel for Illinois Steel Co. In her will Mrs. Gary left her art collection and the bulk of her estate to the Metropolitan Museum.

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