“In the hidden reaches where memory probes, lie sorrows too deep to fathom.” —Consuelo Vanderbilt
Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt had course manners, and he chewed tobacco. He could barely read. He was proud of his lack of refinement. He was a rascal, combative, and cunning. He was a builder, shrewd and hard-working.
And when he died January 4, 1877, his estate was estimated at $2.6 billion in today’s dollars.
He was born May 27, 1794 on Staten Island in New York. He wed twice and help to raise 13 children. He began helping his father on the ferry in New York Harbor and quit school at age 11. At the age of 16, he borrowed $100 from his mother to purchase a periauger, a shallow two-masted sailing vessel. That $100 was the equivalent to $1,700 in 2020.
Vanderbilt effectively transformed the geography of the United States with his empire, including the New York and Harlem Railroad, the New York Central, and Hudson River Railroad, and the Grand Central Depot.
Dutch New Amsterdam is hard to imagine in today’s New York. Wall Street was so named because it used to have a wall running along it, south of which lived most of the colony. The wall was designed to protect against unknown forces in the wilderness whether Native or English or French.
Successive fires in 1776 and 1835 consumed any remnants of the Dutch-period architecture. Historian John Van Dyke wrote in 1909 “the burghers in pot hats and bag breeches wandered along Perel-Straat when it was the water line of the East River and the faithful huis-vrouws in balloon skirts moved along the cow path leading up to City Hall.” Another said that “A fortune of a million is only respectable poverty.” New York was, and seemingly always will be a place to make a fortune, to make a difference, to matter!
Commodore’s son Billy died at the age of 64. Each of his daughters inherited $10 million. Each of his sons inherited $65 million, approximately $1.7 billion today. Billy’s son, Cornelius II, assumed control of the family’s business interests. He did not breed horses or have a yacht. He was a religious, hard-working man, who sired seven children with wife, Alice.
Gloria Vanderbilt was the only child of railroad heir, Reginald Vanderbilt, and was born February 20, 1924. She was married four times and is the mother of Anderson Cooper, television host, journalist, and author. She had a number of affairs including with Howard Hughes and Frank Sinatra.
In the 1930s, Gloria was the subject of a high-profile custody battle between her mother, Gloria Morgan and her paternal aunt, Gertrude Whitney with both seeking control of her trust fund of millions. The $5 million trust fund would had a $74 million value in 2020 dollars. Gloria became a ward of her Aunt Gertrude, and she cut off her mother entirely when she reached her majority. They would reconcile many decades later.
As an adult in the 1970s, Vanderbilt launched a line of fashions, perfumes, and household goods bearing her name. Her blue jeans sold in the millions. But she was extravagant and spent everything that came in saying she could always make more.
The artist, fashion designer and socialite died of stomach cancer June 17, 2019 and is buried at the Vanderbilt Family Cemetery at Moravian Cemetery, Staten Island, N.Y.. When she received the diagnosis, she remarked “Show me the way to get out of this world, ‘cause that is where everything is.”