‘IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW IT’S WHO YOU KNOW’
WHAT LINKS SUPREME COURT JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS, REPUBLICAN BILLIONAIRE ACTIVIST MEGA-DONOR HARLAN CROW, FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, MARIYLN MONROE, JOE DIMAGGIO, THE FOUNDER OF CEREAL, A SOCIALITE RACEHORSE BREEDER AND A ONE-TIME HOTDOG KINGPIN FROM NEW JERSEY NAMED ROGER JAKUBOWSKI? A RUSTIC GILDED AGE MANSION IN THE WILDERNESS OF UPSTATE NEW YORK’S ADIRONDACK MOUNTAINS CALLED TOPRIDGE.
Topridge as seen from Upper St. Regis Lake. Photo Credit: Courtesy of the The Adirondack Experience - Museum in the Adirondacks.
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Roger Jakubowski made a small fortune selling hotdogs and pinball games on the boardwalks of oceanfront New Jersey when he won a last-minute, blind bid for a Gilded Age mansion built by a cereal heiress beside a lake in the wilderness of upstate New York's Adirondack mountains.
"When they called me after I won the Topridge bid, I was working on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City,” the 80-year-old Jakubowski recalled last week. “I had to say 'Excuse me I gotta take care of this customer.''What can I do for you sir?''I'll take a hotdog.''You want anything on it sir?''Yeah give me everything on it.'"
Now Topridge is in the news because Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spent the last 20 summers there hanging out with its new owner, billionaire Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow and other right-wing activists. Thomas was supposed to report the gifts under Federal financial disclosure requirements, but did not, according to watchdog journalists at ProPublica. He promised to follow the rules in the future.
Topridge has a long and lively history, before Crow bought it to wine-and-dine American powerbrokers. It's an Adirondack Great Camp built by Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1923. Her father founded the Postum Cereal Company in 1896. When he died in 1914, 27-year-old Marjorie took control of the company. She turned it into the General Foods Corporation. Post became one of the world's richest women.
Besides Topridge and a compound outside Washington, DC, Post built an oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. Mar-a-Lago, Spanish for sea-to-lake, was finished in 1927. Post entertained extravagantly. She built Mar-a-Lago because her previous winter mansion was too small for her parties, according to her 1973 obituary in the New York Times.
"Her life‐style, with its many estates, domestic staff of more than 40 persons, and many parties, often resembled that of royalty," the newspaper reported. "She lived and entertained on such a luxurious scale that even a queen was once astounded."
Post willed Mar-a-Lago to the US to be used as a winter White House. She willed Topridge to the State of New York, to be added to its Forest Preserve. Because the New York constitution requires Forest Preserve land be kept "Forever Wild," the state agency in charge of administering the Forest Preserve-the Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC-decided to auction Topridge to the highest bidder.
It was either that or burn it down-which is generally the DEC's policy toward buildings on property added to the Forest Preserve.
Jakubowski was visiting the Adirondacks to buy another property when he found out Topridge was for sale and went to see it. He fell in love with the Adirondacks at first sight and bought Topridge as well as the other property. The would-be real estate developer called the Adirondacks at the time the “last nickel bargain in America." Local Adirondack residents paid him back by labeling him "notorious," Hamilton County historian Eliza Jane Darling reports.
"I said 'I gotta have it.' That was Sunday. The auction was Tuesday," Jakubowski told The Free Lance. "No reserve. Closed bid. Everybody puts their bid in an envelope. The highest bidder gets it."
The entrepreneur didn't know how much he should bid until he stepped into a phone booth and called a friend for advice. When he saw 911 on the telephone, he decided to bid $911,000. That's because, he said, New York tried to auction Topridge once before, for a minimum bid of $900,000. Nobody bid. The second time, Jakubowski said, "I figured someone would probably bid 901, so I bid 911."
He figured right. There were five other bidders; his bid was the highest. He traveled from Atlantic City to upstate New York to meet the officials in charge of the auction and confirm the purchase that same day.
"I came up. Everybody looked at me. I had my shirt and my apron and ketchup all over me 'cause I was selling hotdogs that morning, in Atlantic City," he said.
At the same time New York was selling Topridge, a foundation Post established before her death was selling Mar-a-Lago because the Federal government did not want it. Jakubowski wasn't interested in the Florida mansion, but a business associate of his from Atlantic City was: Donald J. Trump. The 45th president-to-be was then a young casino-owner and real estate developer. Trump and Jakubowski actually knew each other because both did business in and owned real estate in Atlantic City.
After the hotdog kingpin won Topridge, Trump telephoned to congratulate him: "Donald goes to me 'You made a better deal Rog.'"
As friendly as he was with Trump, it came with a limit: "I’m an ordinary guy. My father didn't die and leave me 85 skyscrapers."
Trump paid $5 million for the Mar-a-Lago property itself, plus "millions more" to purchase the precious antiques Post had filled Mar-a-Lago with, according to National Public Radio.
Topridge itself was in pretty good shape when Jakubowski bought the 45-building compound in 1984, but it's Adirondack-themed interior furnishings, small museum of taxidermy, Native American artifacts and other accouterment, all collected and curated by Post, went missing.
"All the boats were gone. Everybody came up and got a boat. Everybody that worked for the state," Jakubowski said. "I had to buy all the stuff back. I put an ad in the paper, 'Anybody who had Top Ridge stuff I'll buy it.'"
"I kept the place right," he added. "I never changed anything. I took care of it."
Topridge. Photo Credits: first photo of gate in color, JB Nicholas; all other photographs courtesy of the The Adirondack Experience - Museum in the Adirondacks.
Owning Topridge "was some time," he fondly remembered. It was also entrée into worlds far-removed from those the Camden, New Jersey native had known.
"Everybody came to my parties," he said. “Everybody” included legendary socialite and thoroughbred racehorse breeder Marylou Whitney.
Whitney married young, twice. First as a 33 year-old she married the then-59-year-old Corenlius Vanderbilt Whitney. After he died in 1992, a 72-year-old Marylou married a 32-year-old tennis champion from Alaska in 1997.
"Everybody knows Ms. Whitney. She loved to come here. She'd land her float-plane right in front of my door," he fondly recalled.
The Whitneys owned 51,000-acre Whitney Park. That made them the largest private landowners in the Adirondacks. They also owned an estate in Saratoga Springs named "Cady Hill," a farm in Kentucky, a winter residence in Florida, an apartment in New York City and, after her last marriage, a home in Alaska.
"I remember one day I got a letter from her people, 'Mrs. Whitney would love to meet you.' I told my guy, the caretaker, 'Who the hell is this?' I don't want to meet nobody," Jakubowski recalled.
His caretaker "had to explain who she was to me, 'Roger this is the top of society' so I said 'OK.' She comes in. She flies in. With her entourage. Lands her floatplane on Upper St. Regis. Parks at the boathouse. Comes up."
"And that's how it started with me and society. She took me to the top of society in one day. To the top."
Whitney and Jakubowski grew so close, he said, one Summer she invited him to stay with her at Cady Hill, her Saratoga estate. She offered to let him sleep in a bed George Washington slept in during the American War for Independence. "She had that room because she owned that estate," Jakubowski said.
"'Roger, I'm only going to offer once,'" Jakubowski remembered Whitney saying to him. "Get the bed ready," he replied.
Marylou Whitney with her third husband John Hendrickson in 1997. Photo Credit: via Wikipedia.
Another famous Topridge visitor was baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. The older Yankee Clipper and the young boardwalk baron were introduced by a mutual friend in Atlantic City. On the 25th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe's death in 1987, DiMaggio spent the week hiding out at Topridge.
“Joe Dimaggio. The week that Marilyn Monroe died 25 years before. The 25th anniversary of her death, he was at my house the whole week," Jakubowski said.
DiMaggio was only married to the Hollywood moviestar for a year, but years later rekindled their love shortly before her tragic death by barbiturate overdose in 1962. DiMaggio barred Pres. John F. Kennedy and Hollywood heavyweights from her funeral, never married again and sent a half-dozen roses to her crypt three times a week for 20 years.
"The whole world was looking for him that week. The whole world," Jakubowski remembered. "And he's a Topridge with me, sitting at my table, having dinner. For a whole week."
DiMaggio knew Pres. Ronald Regan. DiMaggio confided to Jakubowski that the baseball legend and the actor-turned-president were so close he could telephone Regan and he would answer. One night, Jakubowski decided to test DiMaggio's claim.
"We were talking and I said 'Do me a favor?' and he said 'What is Rog? What do you want?' and I said 'Do me a favor, get the President on the phone.'“
"He goes to me, 'Really? Don't make me call him if you don't have nothing to say 'cause I'll call him if you want me to,'" DiMaggio replied.
Jakubowski pressed DiMaggio: "'Yeah I want to talk to him.’ ‘Yeah, give me the phone. There's something I want to ask him. ‘ It was Ronald Regan. DiMaggio did it for me because he was so happy hiding out with me that week. No one could get to him."
Jakubowski denied a neighbor's report that a different President actually visited Topridge while he owned it. "Bill Clinton didn't come to visit me. Not me."
As much of the high-life Jakubowski got to see and live, it was his visit to New York's notorious maximum-security prison at Dannemora that "was the best day of my life. It was better than seeing my first son born. It was seeing something I had no idea existed."
A business associate of Jakubowski was peddling pop-up jails. Prisons across the country were literally bursting at the seams, packed with captives of the so-called War on Drugs. New York's prison system was considering purchasing some of the pop-up prisons. The State invited Jakubowski's associate to tour Dannemora to see what they were up against. His friend invited him to tag along. Seeing the wide, towering walls surrounding the prison, Jakubowski thought "10 feet thick concrete is the real thing."
They met the warden, Daniel Senkowski, behind those walls, in his office: "I said 'Warden. I want to see it. I want to see everything. I got to see it to believe it.'"
Senkowski personally led the tour. He took his visitors to a prison factory. The warden pointed out one of the workers.
"They took me to the workshop. He pointed to one guy, 'He's been in here 65 years. 65 years. Can you imagine that? Crazy number."
After the factory, the warden led the group to one of Dannemora's century-old cell-blocks. Jakubowski described being scared to death but also awestruck "just being in a room with hundreds of criminals. Walking in a cellblock three stories high."
They also visited Clinton's special protective custody unit. It houses some of New York's most violent and notorious criminals. Serial killer David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz was among them. He was in protective custody because some of Clinton’s hardened criminals wanted to kill him. They saw Berkowitz like a deer hunter sees a 12-point buck in the cross-hairs of a rifle scope: a trophy to take down. That’s because the so-called .44 caliber killer targeted innocent people. He preferred attacking couples. He shot six people to death, wounded 11 more and stabbed two during a year-long spree in New York City 1976-77.
"That's how I saw the Son of Sam. They opened up a special room. Protective custody. We're walking down a hall and they say 'Hold it right there.' Then there he is, Berkowitz. “
Berkowitz started him in the eye then looked him up-and-down. “He measured me up,” Jakubowski said
The warden also took them to the prison's honor cell-block, where only the best-behaved prisoners are allowed to live.
"Guys are on the phone. Another guy is in the kitchen cooking veal parmigiana. It was just like being in an Italian restaurant. It was spectacular. That's not every cell-block."
Toward the end of the visit, they were walking down a hall and, feeling more confident, Jakubowski headed down a hallway ahead of his protectors. That's when the warden called out to him. Jakuboski was headed toward the disciplinary cell-block, where the alleged worst-of-the-worst are held in solitary confinement. Prisoners sometimes compare it to being “buried under the jail.”
"'You can't go down there,'" Jakubowski recalled the warden warning. "'No one can go down there. Not even the governor can go down there without my permission.'"
"'That's where we keep the ones you can't do nothing with. The ones who are out-of-control,'" the warden explained, Jakubowski said.
"That's the real thing. Seeing the inside of that is something. Really something," Jakubowski added. "You learn everything in prison."
Jakubowski was forced to sell Topridge in 1992 after an economic recession: "There was a collapse. There was some bullshit with the economy. Things tightened up. I couldn't get credit. Banks were demanding cash. I had to sell some of my properties."
That's when Crow, a real estate millionaire from Texas, bought Topridge. Jakubowski said Crow "changed everything to Texas style. And nobody said nothing! He changed everything. How can you do that without the right connections?"
Crow, Jakubowski thinks, spent about $40 million remaking Topridge. "That's what they all talk about. Everything has been changed."
Now, he added, "It's a little different story when Harlan has a party, you what I mean? It's a little bit different."
When asked why, in his opinion, Crow bought Topridge, the former businessman repeated common folk wisdom: "Here's how it works: it's not what you know, it's who you know. That's how it works."
“It's a business," Jakubowski explained. "What's a business job? Make money. Crow bought Topridge. It's a business. That's how they do it."
Interestingly, the Crow family dynasty faced an existential financial threat just before Crow purchased Topridge in 1994. How he managed to slither out of that trap explains the utility of places like Topridge to America’s ruling elite.
In response to the 1990-91 economic recession, lenders foreclosed on the Crow family's real estate empire. But Crow convinced a judge-a judge-that a verbal agreement-a verbal agreement the lenders denied existed-"should take precedence over any documents and that the judge should halt the foreclosure," the New York Times reported in 1996. The legal gymnastics forced the lenders to compromise with Crow: they accepted $175 million for $580 million in debt.
Somehow, Crow kept his family's real estate empire-and even managed to add a crown jewel in the Adirondacks.
Jakubowski all but vanished after selling Topridge. He moved to Canada and "became the stuff of Adirondack legend, rarely surfacing publicly in the Adirondacks in the last several years,” The Baltimore Sun reported in 1997.
He was living in Montreal, he now reveals. He got married and started a family. He had three children, Rodger, jr., Rick and Joss, now 21, 19 and 17, respectively. While he built a new life on the other side of the border, he still owned property in the Adirondacks and a water business which, he says, was “number two at one time in the United States.” He also “owned miles of waterfront.”
Eventually he moved back to the Adirondacks. Today he operates the Ledge Rock at Whiteface Mountain resort, where I found him.
"The Adirondacks have been very good to me," he said.
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