How William K. Vanderbilt II Used His Vast Inherited Fortune to Try to Understand His World and Himself

Vanderbilt Biographer Steven Gittelman Finds Personal Parallels While Researching His Subject's Life

William Kissam Vanderbilt II, great-grandson of the railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and one of the wealthiest men of his time, has fascinated Steven Gittelman for decades. President of a market-research firm in New York City and a trustee of the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum since 1990, Gittelman has just published a biography of Willie K., as he was known.

The publication coincides with the celebration of the Vanderbilt's centennial on the Gold Coast of Long Island and its 60 years as a Suffolk County museum. William K. Vanderbilt II purchased the land for his landmark Eagle's Nest estate on May 27, 1910.

On Thursday, August 19, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., the Vanderbilt Museum—Vanderbilt's former summer estate—will celebrate the publication of Gittelman's book, Willie K. Vanderbilt II: A Biography (McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London, 2010). The book will be available for purchase.

The author will sign copies and lead a lively discussion of Vanderbilt's life and contributions to global exploration, science and natural history. Light refreshments will be served. All guests must RSVP by Monday, August 16, to 631-854-5579.

Gittelman writes that his subject, as a fourth-generation Vanderbilt, was "an inheritor, not a builder and, somewhere in that space, Willie found himself alone in a world that he did not understand."

When Willie K. was 29, the bank failures of 1907 nearly ruined him financially. The First World War soon followed and had a huge impact on his family's massive and powerful industrial empire. Gittelman writes: "As history shifted beneath his feet, Willie grasped at his future, seeking countless routes to discover his purpose and his destiny. But at nearly every turn, Vanderbilt found himself instead either too early or too late."

In the preface, Gittelman says he identifies with his subject. After earning a doctorate in ecology, the author did not find employment or teaching opportunities in the sciences. "I floated sadly without direction for years, much like Willie, seeking something to call my own," he writes. "Unable to find employment in the sciences, I grasped at a nearby straw: I volunteered at various science museums to fill the void."

Vanderbilt circumnavigated the globe twice in the 1930s in his ocean-going yacht, and brought back significant collections of natural-history specimens, birds, fish and invertebrates, as well as ethnographic artifacts from Africa and Asia. He pioneered auto racing in the United States, established the Vanderbilt Cup Races, spurred the development of the American auto industry, and built the prototype for the first toll road, the Vanderbilt Motor Parkway on Long Island.  Despite all this he struggled to grasp his own identity. As he passed through Suez at the close of a global voyage, he asked the question that continued to haunt him, "What's next?"

Vanderbilt was a celebrity in his time, but unhappy with the limelight, particularly after a disastrous marriage and serious financial reversals. A quiet man, Willie, Gittelman says, was happiest on his estate or at sea. Though Vanderbilt kept detailed journals, scrapbooks and logs of his many world travels, he wrote little of his personal life. Gittelman immersed himself in the museum's vast record of a life. The writings there, he says, were "an archive to be proud of, and the materials flowed with signs and clues to this mysterious man."

Gittelman's research took him to far points of the globe as he followed Willie's trail. The details left by Vanderbilt were so precise that Gittelman was able to find lovers' graffiti left by Willie and his future wife Rosamund. But one source surprised Gittelman. A stockpile of cancelled bonds once part of the Syracuse University collection told a tale of how the Vanderbilts used Willie as a power broker, issuing him single-share certificates so that he could sit on dozens of railroad boards. The certificates themselves served as a "Rosetta stone" marking the career of a Vanderbilt who tried, but failed, to be a railroad man.