Great wealth and power from any era is always mesmerizing and in the late 19th century the Vanderbilts were the wealthiest family in the United States having amassed a breathtaking fortune of some $105,000,000 by about 1877. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the patriarch of the dynasty having built up the family business first in shipping and then adding railroads to their sprawling business empire. Known as the “Commodore” upon his death in 1877 he was also easily among the wealthiest individuals on the planet. His son William Henry Vanderbilt subsequently was the wealthiest man in the United States until his death in 1885. The Fall Of The House Of Vanderbilt by descendant Arthur T. Vanderbilt II brings the story of the Commodore, his driving ambition, cunning, and business acumen towards creating the huge family fortune vividly to life.
The book is also a sobering account of calculated social climbing, wanton materialism, internecine family conflicts, and other serious personal issues with alcoholism and gambling that all contributed to varying degrees towards the decline and fall of the Vanderbilt dynasty by the mid-20th century. It also seems that for the Vanderbilts and other American family dynasties such as the Astors, the challenges of building such mass wealth in and of itself was like a whip that spurred them upward and onward. However, the maintenance of their fortune was not a priority — and ultimately led to their downfall within only a couple of generations.
Indeed, one of the most astounding aspects of the Vanderbilt story is the egregious overspending that resulted in relatively quick dissipation of their wealth. This is hardly surprising as they accumulated some forty homes that were expensive to build, lavishly appointed, and required large staffs to maintain them. This says nothing of the fancy automobiles, luxurious yachts, expensive boarding schools, elite universities, and the elaborate, highly publicized parties they hosted and international travel that also required huge financial outlays. While all of their New York City townhouses were eventually torn down and replaced by other structures, many of the other family mansions, hunting lodges, and estates still exist (in many cases serving as museums) and these monumental creations provide a fascinating insight into the overindulgent lives of the super rich.
Not only does wealth need to be maintained, it also needs continual growth – and according to Arthur Vanderbilt’s account in Fortune’s Children for the family to remain competitive in a changing economy, they should have continued expanding their business empire. As the author stated of William Henry Vanderbilt: “He was trying to hold what he had with everything in him. What he never understood was that by being solely concerned with preserving his fortune, he was putting an end to the days of risk taking, of expansion and empire building for the Vanderbilt family. He was braking the growth of the fortune.” (Pg. 73) Allowing this to lapse along with accelerated overspending eventually sapped their financial strength along with the inheritance from Cornelius Vanderbilt eventually being divided among too many descendants.
The fortunes made by dynastic families like the Vanderbilts and their ilk made through industrial activities such as railroads, shipping, coal, iron & steel, textiles etc. now seem like obscure relics, the lumbering mastodons of the past. They appear dowdy in comparison to the supposedly chic, gleaming high tech companies of the present: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft to name a few of the most prominent (and insufferable) ones. The personal fortunes amassed by the business titans of today with billionaires like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg make the Vanderbilts look like pikers in comparison. Still, the wealth of the Vanderbilts was staggering for their era, and they seemed to suffer from something of a paradox — or a curse, as the case may be.
They were accused by their many detractors for being among the most greedy, rapacious robber barons (without a doubt) of The Gilded Age, but later descendants were known for considerable philanthropy, giving generous sums to education, (such as the founding of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee) healthcare and the arts. Nevertheless, the Vanderbilts were under constant scrutiny and criticized regardless of what they did, and what the motives were, damned if they did — and damned if they didn’t. In the present, a few Vanderbilt descendants have forged their own paths outside of big business. For instance, Anderson Cooper is a prominent journalist with CNN and James Vanderbilt is a noted screenwriter of such films as Zodiac and The Amazing Spider-Man.
With all of this said, it will be curious to see if the super wealthy of today learn any lessons from the Vanderbilts and preserve their fortunes, by utilizing them wisely or will these also be squandered away and will their once prominent names also fade away into reduced eminence and relative obscurity?
