Morton Plant was an American railroad and steamship magnate whose Fifth Avenue property became Cartier New York in a transaction that has since become one of the most-retold anecdotes in the firm's history. The property at 653 Fifth Avenue had been Plant's townhouse; the full story of how it changed hands is told in the entries for 653 Fifth Avenue and Maisie Plant.
It was through his wife that the transaction came about. Pierre Cartier negotiated the transfer of the property around 1916 in exchange for a double-strand natural pearl necklace that Maisie Plant wanted, alongside a cash payment. The valuation that made the exchange possible rested on the then-extraordinary market price of natural pearls, which the subsequent cultured pearl revolution later transformed.
Plant's role in the Cartier story is primarily as the previous owner of what became one of the firm's most celebrated addresses. The building itself, not the man, is what persisted in the Cartier history, and the transaction is interesting as a document of the natural pearl market at its peak rather than as a client relationship in the conventional sense.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 5 ("The American Dream: 1900s-1910s")
