Having concluded my nuptial celebration last week, my new hubby
and I embarked on a short but welcome retreat up the Hudson River
in New York. We chose a small hotel in the hamlet of Rhinecliff
with balconies overlooking the beautiful river that flows in two
directions. Surrounded by the river and the soft-shouldered
Catskill Mountains, we were left to muse on the beauty and
history of the region.
This happy location put us in the vicinity of Hyde Park, home of
the Franklin Delano Roosevelt estate and library. But, being good
conservatives, we eschewed a visit to the home of the father of
American socialism and instead spent the day at the Vanderbilt
mansion. This gorgeous edifice was the spring/summer retreat of
Frederick William Vanderbilt, grandson of the patriarch,
Cornelius.
Donated to the public by the Vanderbilt family in 1940 and run by
the National Park Service, the mansion and grounds are
magnificent; both a monument to a more genteel past, and a
reminder that great wealth for a few is often conducive for a
more general diffusion of same to the many; a lesson we seem to
have forgotten.
The descendant of Dutch immigrants, Cornelius Vanderbilt was
known as the Commodore after founding a massive steamship
business, capitalizing in part on the California gold rush. He
then parlayed this fortune into a railroad empire which included
the New York Central and Hudson River lines and ultimately
resulted in the construction of the Grand Central Terminal. At
his death in 1877, his worth was estimated at $100 million —
about $143 billion by today’s standards — making him America’s
second richest man ever, behind John D. Rockefeller.
Determined that his wealth would be the cornerstone for an
American dynasty, the flamboyant Commodore left the bulk of his
estate to his son, William Henry Vanderbilt (1821-1885), who
doubled the family fortune in less than a decade. Not quite the
character that his father was, he was no less an exceptional
entrepreneur who had no noble delusions about the family
business: “The railroads are not run for the benefit of the ‘dear
public’ — that cry is all nonsense — they are built by men who
invest their money and expect to get a fair percentage on the
same.”
Yet both father and son were philanthropists in the truest sense
of the word. These brilliant and sometimes ruthless businessmen
were some of the young country’s first philanthropists, giving
among other gifts, a $1 million dollar endowment for Vanderbilt
University, the largest charitable donation in American history
up to that time. They also gave generously to the arts, helping
to establish the Metropolitan Opera House.
This munificence also extended to their household help as was
evidenced by the Commodore’s grandson, Frederick William
Vanderbilt (1856-1938), the owner of the mansion I visited last
week. As our excellent NPS guide informed us, the 60 or so
servants at Hyde Park were treated well; indeed, each was paid
twice the going rate. In addition, all the hired help and their
families received free medical care from the Vanderbilts’ own
family doctors as well as $1,000 endowments for their children’s
college educations.
The Vanderbilts, whose empire grew on the heels of the Industrial
Revolution, ushered in what was known as America’s Gilded Age;
the period from the end of the Civil War to the onset of the 20th
century. Great fortunes were made by men who took chances and
worked hard; men who enjoyed the money that they earned and were
not ashamed of it, building their mansions large and furnishing
them expansively, as if to show the rest of the world what could
be accomplished by these upstart Americans.
Of course some things never change. Men like Vanderbilt,
Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan were derided in
their time as “robber barons” and worse. Yet, by the end of the
Gilded Age, the nation experienced an explosion of wealth never
witnessed in human history, and real prosperity was starting to
spread to all classes of Americans.
And this would have been impossible without men like the
Vanderbilts who built the railroads that employed thousands
directly and enabled millions to share in the American dream they
carried in their freight cars and steamships.
