William Kissam Vanderbilt (December 12, 1849 – July 22, 1920) was a member of the prominent American Vanderbilt family. He managed railroads and was a horse breeder.
The second son of William Henry Vanderbilt, from whom he inherited $55 million, and grandson of "The Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Kissam Vanderbilt was for a time active in the management of the family railroads, though not much after 1903. His sons, William Kissam Vander...
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William Kissam Vanderbilt (December 12, 1849 – July 22, 1920) was a member of the prominent American Vanderbilt family. He managed railroads and was a horse breeder.
The second son of William Henry Vanderbilt, from whom he inherited $55 million, and grandson of "The Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, William Kissam Vanderbilt was for a time active in the management of the family railroads, though not much after 1903. His sons, William Kissam Vanderbilt II (1878–1944) and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt (1884–1970), were the last to be active in the railroads, the latter losing a proxy battle for the New York Central Railroad in the 1950s.
In 1879 after taking over P.T. Barnum's Great Roman Hippodrome which was on railroad property by Madison Square Park he renamed the facility Madison Square Garden.
Vanderbilt's first wife was Alva Erskine Smith (1853–1933), whom he married on April 20, 1875. Born in 1853, in Mobile, Alabama to a merchant father whose extended family owned a small plantation...
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