They say you can't take it with you, but they tried. I grew up in the same area. In the 70's and 80's kids would go up and party there at night. The police never did much about it. There was no security and the place was vandalized. You could access it from high rock park behind it as the mausoleum is buried into a hillside. It was placed there because the commodore was from Staten Island. Their Staten Island estate ( a farm actually) was where the New Dorp high school and Miller Field are now located. At the time of construction you could see the lower bay from the mausoleum. At some point in the 80's Gloria Vanderbilt took action to secure the site and have it restored. She had the doors put on and the stained glass removed and the gates fixed. It is a well maintained and popular cemetery, so I am sure it is looked after. Gloria and her family are buried near the mausoleum, but not in it.
The unfortunate thing is that no money was left in a fund to take care of the mausoleum and the grounds in perpetuity. The Commodore certainly could have done that. But I'm sure he thought the wealth in the family would go on and on. The mausoleum needs some repairs from leaks from what I have read. There are many open crypts in the mausoleum, but there are not going to be enough Vanderbilts to fill them.
Actually, the $100million in 1877, is according to online calculators, "only" $2.491billion (2billion 491million) However, the buying power of that money was FAR greater than the calculated 2020/21 equivalent.
Read : " Fortunes Children, The decline of the House of Vanderbilt ", learn of the life of the uneducated illiterate who amassed a fortune squandered by the kind of relatives he earned for himself, and richly deserved. Amazing man, only that greed and avarice were his most redeeming attributes.
Thanks for the tip. www.amazon.com/Fortunes-Children-Fall-House-Vanderbilt/dp/0062224069/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?dchild=1&keywords=fortune+children%2C+the+decline+of+the+house+of+vanderbilt&qid=1591677087&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr1
the crypt must have been open up recently to accept the remains of Gloria Vanderbilt P.S. I stand corrected, people tell me she was not buried there....
Gloria was actually buried in the Vanderbilt cemetery adjacent to the mausoleum alongside her last husband Wyatt Cooper. From my research, only those with the last name of Vanderbilt can be buried in the mausoleum.
The mausoleum shown here has been covered from its original grandeur with Anti-Vandalism doors and window covers, necessary because the security guards once paid with Vanderbilt's money are long gone and the site left defenseless because the wealth accumulated at the expense of, and by the sweat and toil of, thousands paid peanuts to make the miserly old 'Commodore' a hoarder of money. I'm sure the site is nevertheless in much finer shape than the rotted corpse of the old lover of money.
Thanks for your opinion, however I adhered to another point. He was American business magnate and philanthropist. Vanderbilt provided the initial gift of $1million ($260 M. in today's terms) to found Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee
@@odessa1799 Read his biography. He was a very ruthless man who didn't care who he hurt and how many people he put out of work and starve just to get even with his competition. All of them were just like him at the time. All "Captains of Industry and Technology" are the same today.
Before making the video, I once again read the biography of Vanderbilt. You cannot judge people who lived and worked 150 years ago from today's perspective. More importantly, what they did. During the construction of the Panama Canal, 36,000 people died. Now you will judge those who built this engineering miracle. Even today, large construction, unfortunately does not do without sacrifices. I am in this business and I know what I'm talking about.
