Early Life

James Henry Alexandre was born in 1848, the son of Frederick Francis Alexandre, founder of the Alexandre Line, and Marie Cipriant. He grew up in New York City and Staten Island, where he developed an early interest in horses and yachting. As a boy, he rode on the track at Jerome Park, the center of New York’s Gilded Age racing world.

Career and Sporting Life

Alexandre continued the family tradition of entrepreneurship and public prominence. He became vice president of the National Steeplechase and Hunt Association, governor of the Coney Island Jockey Club, director of the Saratoga Racetrack, and a member of the Jockey Club. His activities placed him among the most influential figures in late nineteenth-century American equestrian sports.

Residences and Lifestyle

In 1903, he purchased the townhouse at 35 East 67th Street in Manhattan (see Houses and Estates), a fashionable address among the city’s prominent merchant families. He also maintained a large estate, Shore Acres, on Staten Island, where the family hosted elaborate gatherings, including the 1909 wedding of his daughter Gertrude Jerome Alexandre.

He was an avid yachtsman, and his yacht, the Sappho, frequently carried him between Staten Island and Manhattan. A newspaper account in July 1902 described an incident in which the Sappho rescued a man who had fallen overboard from the liner Lucania while passing through the Narrows.

Marriages and Family

His first wife, Gertrude Jerome, died in 1883, leaving two young children. In 1898, Alexandre married Elizabeth Boyce Lawrence, linking the Alexandre family with the Lawrences of Bayside and Oyster Bay. After her death in 1906, he married Pauline Garcia de Oñativa Townsend, a woman of Spanish descent and social distinction.

Death

James Henry Alexandre died in 1912. He was remembered for his wealth, his leadership in the American racing world, and his embodiment of the social and sporting culture of New York’s prosperous merchant families at the turn of the century.