The Story of the Vanderbilt Family

When 120 of the Commodore's descendants gathered at Vanderbilt University in 1973 for the first family reunion, there was not a millionaire among them. What had gone wrong with the Vanderbilt's plans to found a family dynasty? There is no easy answer. Within 70 years of his death, the last of the great Vanderbilt mansions on Fifth Avenue had made way for modern office buildings. But taxes, depressions, and reproduction had posed no burden to other family dynasties founded in the same era.