Level: Series
Ref No: LKE/LF
Extent: 25 boxes
Title: LKE Law and Finance
Dates: 1915-1977

Fred Gwatkin, solicitor
and Dartington Founding
TrusteeDescription: Legal and financial records of the establishment, operation, and dissolution of various international trusts and private companies. Also includes records of the administration of American properties owned by Dorothy Elmhirst. Houses included Apple Green (formerly the Mott House), Old Westbury, Long Island, and a town house at 1130 Fifth Avenue, New York, designed by Delano and Aldrich in 1915.Other real estate holdings included a share in the Whitney Realty Company in New York State. The series therefore contains early administrative records covering forestry and other subjects, for what is today the William C Whitney Wilderness Area, also known as Whitney Park in the Adirondack Mountains. Also mentioned are tracts of land in Montgomery County, Maryland, which were developed in the 1930s with the advice of architect William Lescaze.

Other material includes personal and Dartington Hall Trust legal correspondence. Correspondents include Osmer Gorton, an administrator for the Elmhirsts in New York. There are many letters from Robert Young and Milton Rose, attorneys and partners in the Manhattan law firm of Baldwin, Todd & Lefferts. There is extensive correspondence with British solicitors, especially Fred Gwatkin of McKenna & Co, who was one of the first trustees of Dartington Hall.

A born archivist, Leonard Elmhirst saved hundreds of personal receipts dating from 1915 through the 1940s. These are also preserved.

LEFT: Milton Rose, New York attorney with the firm of Baldwin, Todd, Lefferts & Co, a Manhattan law firm that became Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, and Alexander when Richard Nixon joined the firm in 1963.