Financial Advisor and Philanthropist
Silas Mountsier III has had an incredible career handling the finances of a who’s who of some of the wealthiest clients this country has to offer, and he deserves high accolades for the amazing personal and business successes amassed over his fifty-plus years working for Citibank and the United States Trust Company.
But Silas was always more than your traditional banker. Many of Silas’s clients became dear, lifelong friends because he always treated them like family rather than clients. There are countless tales of the over-the-top personal services he’s provided for his clients and their families—and for the lucky ones, that relationship spanned fifty years or more.
Those who know Silas know how much he cares for those around him, and for those outside of his immediate circle. Silas’s love for people, his deep personal belief in the inherent worth of the individual, his incredibly successful long-lived career, and his philanthropic nature are what makes his story unique.
His relationship with his clients went well beyond making sure their investments were sound. From a call in the middle of the night that so-and-so’s child is in jail in Manhattan (Silas got up, got dressed, and headed into the city to bring him home) to the man who told Silas that he’d been a better father to his children than he had ever been himself, Silas was involved in some of the most intimate areas of complex family dynamics—again, not your traditional banker.
The list of Silas’s personal accomplishments in his chosen field is impressive, but even more so is what he’s chosen to do with that success time and time again. The following is a beautiful example.
Allegheny College
Silas is an alumnus of Allegheny College, in Meadville, Pennsylvania, as are multiple generations of the Mountsier family. He is also one of the longest-serving members on Allegheny’s Board of Trustees.
Silas’s relationship with Allegheny serves as a beautiful example of how the results of the genuine, personal relationships he seems to have always developed with his clients were used to benefit others.
In the 1990s, as Silas was walking up Madison Avenue, he saw someone in front of him falter. Silas rushed over, held the man upright, and helped him to a nearby bench. When they had a moment to look at each other, they realized they were no strangers.
“Mr. Mountsier.”
“Mr. Quade.”
Mr. Henry Quade had been a former client of Silas’s, and from this latest encounter they became close, lifelong friends. Mr. Quade was an impressive man who had run General Motors International–Asia, and during the lead-up to WWII had managed to get all his employees out of Japanese-occupied Indonesia before being captured and imprisoned himself.
As one of three executors of Mr. Quade’s estate, Silas was allowed to donate $500,000 to a worthy cause of his choice. He chose Allegheny College and used these funds to help physically transform the college’s campus into the beautiful place it is today. And in typical fashion, Silas did not call attention to himself, but honored his friend Henry Quade by developing Quade Walk, a series of beautiful paths that run through the middle of Allegheny’s campus.
Silas’s personal compensation for being one of the executors of Mr. Quade’s estate was an additional $500,000, which he promptly donated to Allegheny College to commission public sculptures to further beautify the campus.
The groundwork for these campus enhancements had been laid a few years earlier when Beatrix Tuxbury, a client-turned-lifelong-friend (whose husband, Nathaniel, had been president of General Motors International), passed away. She left Silas her incredible Park Avenue apartment, which he promptly sold, donating $500,000 to Allegheny College for the initial development of its master plan.
This is perhaps the clearest example of the way Silas has used the financial rewards he reaped from his personal successes to help others, but here’s one more.
Helen May Schaefer
When Helen May Schaefer’s will was unsealed, Silas learned (along with her not-so-loving extended family) that she had left her fortune to Silas.
She was a lifelong client who, like so many others, had become a dear lifelong friend. Mrs. Schaefer was an extremely wealthy woman from Mississippi who came to New York regularly to deposit her dividend checks. Offering her the same personal attention he did all his clients, Silas remembers seeing My Fair Lady “more than fifty times,” since that is what Mrs. Schaefer most loved to do when visiting New York.
The inheritance was worth in excess of $10 million, and within twenty-four hours Silas had given it all away. He most notably arranged for her properties to be split among her large staff of long-time (multi-generational) employees, changing their lives and enabling those who wished to attend college. Mrs. Schaefer’s extended family (she did not have children) was not thrilled, but Silas moved forward with what he thought was the right thing to do.
As a side note, through his close relationship with Mrs. Schaefer, Silas was awarded—more than fifty years ago—one of the most prestigious honors New Orleans has to offer by being named King of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, a position dating back to 1872. The mayor of New Orleans traditionally offers the key to the city to the reigning Rex, or King of the Carnival. The king is chosen by a special committee and is usually someone who has endeared themselves to and is loved by their membership. That sounds a lot like Silas.
Westminster College
Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, had been supported by Silas’s mother’s family for generations. When Margaret Stevenson Mountsier passed away, Silas started a memorial fund in her name for a student scholarship, with preference shown for a graduate of Nutley High School.
Odyssey House
Silas served on the original Board of Directors of Covenant House when that incredible nonprofit was founded in 1972.
Covenant House’s mission is to provide safe housing and holistic care to youth ages twelve to twenty-four experiencing homelessness and to survivors of human trafficking. Covenant House offers services including healthcare, educational support/GED preparation, college scholarships, job readiness and workforce development programs, substance-abuse treatment and prevention programs, legal services, mental health services, and transitional living programs.
Throughout the late 1970s, Covenant House expanded its social service programs within New York City and began to branch out, opening centers in thirty-four cities throughout the United States, Canada, and Latin America.
The Unity Concerts
For many years Silas served on the Board of Directors of Montclair’s Unity Concerts, an organization with a history of offering incredible cultural opportunities to the people of Essex County and beyond.
A smattering of guests over the years includes Isaac Stern, Vladimir Horowitz, Yo-Yo Ma, Joan Sutherland, Dizzy Gillespie, Amelia Earhart, Sinclair Lewis, Paul Robeson, and Clarence Darrow. Wow!
The Lotos Club
Silas is a lifetime member—and a long-standing board member—of the historic Lotos Club, serving as its president for two years.
The Lotos Club is one of the oldest literary and arts clubs in the United States. For more than a century and a half it has been a preeminent New York City club. Samuel Clemens, an early member, famously called it “the ace of clubs.”
The Lotos Foundation supports, encourages, and recognizes exceptional students and emerging artists in the fields that have been of primary interest to the club throughout its history: literature, art, sculpture, music, architecture, journalism, drama, science, and education.
Silas was instrumental in transforming the club’s latest home, a 1900 residence designed by Richard H. Hunt. Through his efforts—and sleuthing—such treasures as its large Tiffany skylight, which lay hidden and forgotten for decades above a dropped ceiling, was discovered and restored.
The Lotos Club is known for its annual State Dinners—honoring such luminaries as Ulysses S. Grant, Amelia Earhart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Robert Frost, and Angela Lansbury—and under Silas’s tenure as president, Mikhail Baryshnikov was honored.
Times Square Hum
Silas is the donor of one of Manhattan’s most unique public art installations—the Times Square Hum.
When the children of one of Silas’s clients—who had made the arrangements for the art installation before he passed away—lost interest in the project after his death, Silas reached into his own pocket to honor the financial commitment to the artist.
The Mountsier-Hardie Estate
The Mountsier-Hardie Estate is known well beyond Nutley’s borders as one of New Jersey’s preeminent private gardens. Its two acres have been thoughtfully and lovingly developed for more than forty years into a series of unique spaces visited and enjoyed by more than a thousand people in 2022 alone. It is one of the highlights of New Jersey’s Garden Conservancy and was featured on the cover of their main publication. In that year, more people visited Silas and Graeme’s labor of love than any other New Jersey private garden.
The very existence of the garden in its present form is another example of Silas not being a banker in the traditional sense and of the unique, deep, genuine relationships he develops with so many people. One of his clients spent a million dollars developing a portion of the garden when Silas had offered her a place to live out her final days.
Another client rearranged her will in such a way that Silas would be able to care for the garden for the rest of his life: “I want you to live well until you die” was the way she put it. Silas continues to “live well,” and our community continues to reap the benefits.
Nutley
While induction into the Nutley Hall of Fame is based on accomplishments beyond Nutley’s borders, this is a welcome opportunity to also applaud Silas for his philanthropy right here at home, where he has lived his entire life.
Silas was a long-serving board member of the Nutley Family Services Bureau and has served on the board of the Child Guidance Clinic of Nutley and Belleville. Silas has served on the Nutley Planning Board and was one of the first members of the Nutley Historical Society when it was founded in 1945. A member of Vincent United Methodist Church for eighty years, Silas taught Sunday School and served on their Finance Committee, Missions Committee, and Church Council. Silas is also one of those responsible for the establishment of the United Nations Garden in Kingsland Park.
Silas has also made significant contributions to the Nutley Family Services Bureau, the Nutley Public Library, the Academic Booster Club, the Nutley Educational Foundation, the Nutley Historical Society, and other local organizations. Never one to seek the spotlight, Silas is also responsible for private acts of kindness and generosity, whether paying college tuition for local students or taking care of a family’s taxes so they wouldn’t lose their home.
In 2022, Silas was awarded the Virginius D. Mattia Memorial Award for Distinguished Community Service.