Payson, Joan Whitney (1903–1975)

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Payson, Joan Whitney (1903–1975)

American philanthropist. Born Joan Whitney on February 5, 1903, in New York City; died on October 4, 1975, in New York City; only daughter and one of two children of Payne Whitney (an investor) and Helen (Hay) Whitney; graduated from Miss Chapin's School, New York City; attended Barnard College for a year; married Charles Shipman Payson (an industrialist and Wall Street investor), on July 5, 1924; children: three daughters and two sons (one of whom was killed in World War II).

Unpretentious, generous, and one of the world's wealthiest women, Joan Whitney Payson was the granddaughter of W.C. Whitney, a New York streetcar magnate who served as secretary of the navy under President Grover Cleveland. Her father Payne Whitney enlarged the family fortune with astute investments in lumber, banking, and real estate; her mother Helen Hay Whitney was the daughter of John Hay, an assistant private secretary to President Abraham Lincoln who later served as U.S. secretary of state. The Whitney family bred horses on a 1,000-acre farm near Lexington, Kentucky, and raced them at Saratoga Race Track in Saratoga Springs, New York, an enterprise which W.C. had a hand in developing. Joan's mother founded the Greentree Stable which produced the 1931 Kentucky Derby winner Twenty Grand, as well as other thoroughbreds. (When Helen died in 1944, Joan and her brother Jock Whitney inherited Greentree, which they continued to operate.) Joan was riding as soon as she could walk, and later recalled being taken as a child to Saratoga where she was allowed to bet a quarter on each race. Her mother was also a great baseball fan and often took her daughter with her to watch the New York Giants play at the Polo Grounds

Following her graduation from New York's exclusive Chapin School, and a year at Barnard College, Joan met and married Charles Shipman Payson, the son of a wealthy Portland (Maine) family who was attending Yale in preparation for a career as an industrialist and Wall Street banker. The wedding at Manhasset, New York, on July 5, 1924, was a society event of note, as were most of the Payson celebrations that followed. (Lindsay Van Gelder of the New York Post once likened the Paysons' lifestyle to an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.)

Social events not withstanding, Joan Payson was enterprising and energetic and in 1929 founded Young Books, a children's book store. It gradually expanded to include a wider range of books and in 1942 merged with the Wakefield Book Store, which remained under Payson's ownership. During the 1930s and 1940s, Payson, along with her brother Jock, gave financial backing to a number of successful plays and movies, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Rebecca, and Gone With the Wind.

Maturity did not diminish Payson's childhood enthusiasm for baseball and during the 17 years that the Giants were in New York, she not only attended their home games but purchased close to 10% of the team's stock. In 1960, when team owner Horace Stoneham decided to move the team to San Francisco, Payson offered to buy the club to keep it in New York, but Stoneham would not sell. In 1962, she put up 85% of the funds to establish the New York Mets, and then played a crucial role in urging Casey Stengel to come out of retirement to manage the team. For the first five years, the Mets never finished higher than ninth place in a ten-team league, but New Yorkers staunchly supported them. "To Joan Payson … making money was never the primary object to owning the Mets," wrote David Dempsey. "[I]ndeed, the object may well have been getting rid of money, and it is highly ironic that what might have been a fine tax loss has proved to be such a good investment." In 1969, under the new management of Gil Hodges, the Mets won the National League's Eastern Division title, went on to defeat Atlanta in the playoffs, and then beat the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series.

Through the years, Payson's philanthropic projects widened to encompass medical, art, and civic institutions, among them New York Hospital, St. Mary's Hospital in Palm Beach, Florida, The United Hospital Fund, the Lighthouse in Manhattan, and the North Shore Hospital in Manhasset, Long Island, which she also founded. She served as president of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, which financed research in rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease, and diseases of the connective tissues. She supported the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, and established the Country Art Gallery in Westbury, Long Island. (Payson's private art collection contained paintings by Goya, El Greco, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Renoir, Corot, and Toulouse-Lautrec.) Payson was also active politically, holding membership in the Women's National Republican Club of New York City, and donating regularly to the Republican Party.

The Paysons had five children, three daughters and two sons, one of whom was killed in World War II. They maintained numerous residences around the country, most of which were accessed by the family's private Pullman car, the "Adios II." Despite her wealth and society connections, Payson was described as "completely unaffected, warm, and innately gracious." While interviewing her for The New York Times Magazine, Dempsey noted her "childlike directness" and "feeling of gratitude that anyone would think her life worth prying into." Joan Payson died in New York on October 4, 1975.