Career
His father carefully oversaw his business training, starting him out at age 19 as a clerk in a New York banking house. After joining the executive of the Staten Island Railway, he was made its president in 1862 then three years later was appointed vice-president of the Hudson River railway.
In 1869, he was made vice-president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, becoming its president in 1877. He took over for his father as president of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, the Canada Southern Railway, and the Michigan Central Railroad at the time of the Commodore's death.
He actively expanded the family's railroad empire, and added millions to the gargantuan Vanderbilt family fortune. At his retirement in 1883, his elder sons assumed the head positions in the family railroad empire, and they inherited his massive fortune when he died. It was in his sons' time that the Vanderbilt family demanded social recognition, and obtained it with the efforts of his daughter-in-law Alva, from the older families of New York City high society, centered on the Astor family, whom the Vanderbilts had by then far outstripped in wealth. After Alva's social conquests, the Vanderbilts were recognized as one of the leading families of American high society in the Gilded Age.
He and his wife had eight children: four sons and four daughters.
Vanderbilt was an active philanthropist, giving extensively to a number of philanthropic causes including the YMCA, funding to help establish the Metropolitan Opera and an endowment for the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. In 1880, he provided the money for Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee to construct the Wesley Hall building for use as the Biblical Department and library and included 160 dormitory rooms for students and professors, lecture halls, as well as a cafeteria. The building was destroyed by fire in 1932 and his son Frederick made another donation to help cover the insurance shortfall and allow a new building to be constructed.
Vanderbilt was an avid art enthusiast; his collection included some of the most valuable works of the Old Masters, and over his lifetime Vanderbilt acquired more than 200 paintings, which he housed in his lavish and palatial Fifth Avenue mansion.
Despite his great wealth he never considered himself happy with it — shortly before his death he said: "The care of $200 million is too great a load for any back or brain to bear. It is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it."
Read more about this topic: William Henry Vanderbilt
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)