MILLIONAIRE’S NEW ENTERPRISE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3345, 11 October 1911, Page 7

MILLIONAIRE’S NEW ENTERPRISE.

ROCKEFELLER, AT 72, SPENDS FORTUNE ON HIS HOME.

At the great age of seventy-two, John D. Rockefeller, richest man in the world, “oil king,” etc., is building himself still more . magnificent palaces to live in. He has just agreed to an expenditure of £200,000 to improve his country home near New York, and the work is to occupy two years. In the interval he and Mrs Itockefeller will manage to exist in another abode, gorgeous, and immense, but not so big as the one he is altering. These alterations have given him the opportunity of coming out as an achitect, for he s has designed them himself. He made a model of the new buildings, and placed it upon a turntable on the spot where he intended to build. Ingeniously arranged mechanism made it possible for him to turn it about by means of levers. The oil king’s reason for building is to add ten guest rooms to his home. Mr. Rockefeller is a man brimful of inter est in life, whose chief hobby, apart from golf, is to devote a large portion of his immense income to the investigation of the cure and causes of disease, education, and the social advancement of his fellow man. The new buildings are to be planned according to his own scheme of daily life. He wanted light in the dining room in the morning and at noon. The only time he insisted upon having light in his office was between two and three o’clock in the afternoon. He wanted his own bedroom dark between three and four in the afternoon, the hour in which he takes his daily nap after completion of his business in the office. After much experimenting, he composed a time-table by which he learned when the sun would shine in each room. When he had completed his calculations he turned the time-table over to the architects and told them to “go ahead.”