The House of Vanderbilt

"I have been insane on the subject of moneymaking all my life," Cornelius Vanderbilt once admitted. He was born on Staten Island in 1794 into a family rich in the Dutch heritage of colonial New York but modest in means. His entrepreneurial talent emerged at age 16 when he began a ferry service to Manhattan. By the 1840s his steamship lines to ports all along the Atlantic coast placed him on a par with the most successful industrialists and earned him the name Commodore.

Vanderbilt began buying up struggling railroads in the 1860s and making them profitable. His trains ran on schedule and the service was good. His New York Central Railroad grew into the nation's biggest business by the 1870s. The hub of this network, which he expanded throughout the Northeast and to Chicago, was Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. Grand Central Terminal, 1872

Long after his death, the Commodore was described thus: "The largest employer of labor in the United States, he despised all routine office work; kept his figures in a vest-pocket book; ate sparingly; never speculated in stocks; never refused to see a caller; rose early; read Pilgrim's Progress every year, and, for diversion, played whist and drove his trotters whenever he could." At his death in 1877 he had $100 million. By leaving the bulk of his fortune to one heir, his son William Henry, he established a dynasty that promised to take the name and fortune to still greater heights.

Though he lacked the enthusiasm for the business wars his father thrived on, William Henry Vanderbilt died in 1885 with twice what he had inherited. In his will, he explained that $200 million was too much for any individual. "There is no pleasure to be got out of it as an offset - no good of any kind." He was generous to all eight children, with the larger shares going to his two oldest sons who now managed the railroads. It was this generation who would elevate spending money to an art and who, with the exception of Frederick, would dissipate most of it in the process. The Commodore's dream of keeping the fortune intact died with the century.

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Roosevelt-Vanderbilt National Historic Sites 4097 Albany Post Road Hyde Park, NY 12538 Last updated: February 9, 2001 http://www.nps.gov/vama/house_of.html Author:ROVA Webmaster