John Shaffer Phipps

John Shaffer Phipps (August 11, 1874 – May 12, 1958) was an American lawyer and businessman who was an heir to the Phipps family fortune and a shareholder of his father-in-law's Grace Shipping Lines. He was a director of the Hanover Bank, U.S. Steel Corp. and W. R. Grace & Co.

Biography

Known as "Jay", he was born on August 11, 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania to Henry Phipps and Anne Childs Shaffer.

On November 4, 1903 he married Margarita Celia Grace at Battle Abbey in Battle, East Sussex, England. She was the daughter of Michael P. Grace and niece of William Russell Grace, Irish immigrants who became very successful in business. John and Margarita had four children. They were: John Henry Phipps, Michael Grace Phipps, Hubert Beaumont Phipps, and Margaret Phipps Boegner, who married J. Gordon Douglas, Jr.

John Phipps amassed almost 2,500 acres (10 km2) of rolling Virginia farm lands in The Plains, Virginia including Brenton, an 1889 stone manor house. He was a polo player and Thoroughbred racehorse owner, and the property assembled from 1928 onwards would be the site of his Rockburn Stud farm. Upon his death it passed to his son Hubert.

Phipps purchased an old 160-acre (0.65 km2) Quaker farm on Long Island where he built a large mansion with magnificent gardens that, following his death, became a non-profit organization that today is known as Westbury House & Gardens and is open to the public. In the 1920s he purchased several large properties in West Palm Beach, Florida including one that was once used as a pineapple plantation. He subdivided the property and turned it into the three largest subdivisions containing luxury residential homes in what is now the El Cid Historic District. John Phipps built a home for himself he called "Casa Bendita." A large oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, it was designed in 1921 by architect Addison Mizner. Today, the property is occupied by his granddaughter, Susan Phipps Cochran, and her husband.

He died on April 27, 1958 in Palm Beach, Florida.