Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of New York City’s first and greatest jeweler, made every moment count in a life of risk and reward. His ambition and daring exemplified that famous phrase—the New York Minute—and the energy and innovative spirit it represents. The Atlas clock he installed above his store and that today presides over the Fifth Avenue flagship is a lasting tribute to his powerful vision as a jeweler and watchmaker. 

His ambition was apparent from a young age, when he borrowed $1,000 from his father and opened his first store in 1837 on Lower Broadway. Though the city was in the throes of a financial crisis, the 25-year-old Tiffany prospered as customers vied for the latest French accessories and such rarities as bronze curiosities from ancient India and Chinese porcelains, which he purchased from ship captains at ports in New York and Boston. Within a few years he had introduced the first important diamonds to the U.S., had begun selling fine clocks and watches and, by the 1860s, he was the most famous purveyor of diamonds in the country. 

“Good design is good business,” he often said, and so was inspired thinking, as he proved in 1858, when he bought 20 miles of extra cable used to lay the Atlantic telegraph cable. Tiffany created mementos with four-inch cable lengths finished with brass, as well as paperweights, watch charms, canes and umbrella handles. On the day these goods went on sale, police were called to control the crowds clamoring for a piece of history.

He soon expanded to London and Paris, where he bought gems of noble provenance for America’s growing wealthy class. The frenzy for royal jewels among New York’s elite peaked in 1887 with his purchase of about one-third of the French Crown Jewels. Among the ready customers were Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer and New York social queen Caroline Astor, who acquired the Empress Eugénie’s diamond rivières and corsage ornaments. Tiffany followed this triumph with spectacular jewelry displays at the historic Paris world’s fairs, where he won gold medals and became jeweler to Europe’s royal houses. 

By the turn of the 20th century, Tiffany & Co. was the world’s premier jeweler, whose founder was known for good works as much as “good business.” A civic leader, he helped to finance the construction of the Statue of Liberty and public parks throughout the city. He was also an original trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History. As prominent members of New York’s social elite, the Tiffanys danced at Mrs. Astor’s legendary balls and summered in Newport, Rhode Island. 

Newspapers were effusive in their praise of Charles Tiffany. To Harper’s Weekly (1891), he was a merchant without peer, “the active head of the greatest jewelry and high-art establishment in existence . . .” 

When he died in 1902, at the age of 90, businesses closed in his honor and The Financial Record eulogized him as one of the “great public figures and most striking personalities of the age.” 

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