@RusA #9858706
Yes, that's true. Cooper's mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was the great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the major tycoons in the Gilded Age of the mid-to-late 19th century. He made his money originally on running local river steamboats, then on ocean-going steamships, with which he cornered the market on ocean travel from the East Coast to the West Coast: traveling by ship down to the Isthmus of Panama, taking a coach across to the Pacific, then catching another ship to go up the other coast. It was a longer trip than going overland by stagecoach, but was less dangerous and took less time. He even proposed building a canal across Panama (and later Nicaragua, taking advantage of rivers and a natural lake) to make the whole trip in one ship, but he couldn't get the funding for it. Later on he started buying up local railroads from New England to Chicago and in 1870 consolidated them into one of the first big corporations in American history, the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, and he built Grand Central Terminal to run it.
Side note: I've mentioned before that in the movie North By Northwest (1959), Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint's characters take a New York Central train, the Lake Shore Limited, from NYC to Chicago, that leaves at about 6:30 pm, travels over night, and arrives at about 9:30 am. When I travel out west, I take the same route on the same schedule, and the train even has the same name. These days, it's Amtrak instead of New York Central, but it's cool to feel that connection with movie history.
And yes, the transcontinental railroad system was built after the Civil War, from 1863 to 1869, and revolutionized travel, replacing long, boring, uncomfortable, and often dangerous stagecoach travel with relatively safe and comfortable travel by train. The railroad system was to the 19th and early 20th centuries what the Interstate Highway System has been from the 1950s to today. Long distance air travel has taken some of the travel business, but it hasn't killed highway travel the way the highways and personal automobiles killed the railroad industry. Our present long-distance rail system, Amtrak, is heavily subsidized by the government, and many conservatives would like to see it disappear.
The Vanderbilts aren't anything like as rich and influential as they used to be, although a number of them continue in various fields of business. Most of the big Gilded Age family mansions were either torn down, sold, or turned into museums in the mid-20th century. Gloria, Anderson Cooper's mother, inherited several million dollars, but made her name in the fashion industry.
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@RusA #9858706
Yes, that's true. Cooper's mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, was the great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the major tycoons in the Gilded Age of the mid-to-late 19th century. He made his money originally on running local river steamboats, then on ocean-going steamships, with which he cornered the market on ocean travel from the East Coast to the West Coast: traveling by ship down to the Isthmus of Panama, taking a coach across to the Pacific, then catching another ship to go up the other coast. It was a longer trip than going overland by stagecoach, but was less dangerous and took less time. He even proposed building a canal across Panama (and later Nicaragua, taking advantage of rivers and a natural lake) to make the whole trip in one ship, but he couldn't get the funding for it. Later on he started buying up local railroads from New England to Chicago and in 1870 consolidated them into one of the first big corporations in American history, the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, and he built Grand Central Terminal to run it.
Side note: I've mentioned before that in the movie North By Northwest (1959), Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint's characters take a New York Central train, the Lake Shore Limited, from NYC to Chicago, that leaves at about 6:30 pm, travels over night, and arrives at about 9:30 am. When I travel out west, I take the same route on the same schedule, and the train even has the same name. These days, it's Amtrak instead of New York Central, but it's cool to feel that connection with movie history.
And yes, the transcontinental railroad system was built after the Civil War, from 1863 to 1869, and revolutionized travel, replacing long, boring, uncomfortable, and often dangerous stagecoach travel with relatively safe and comfortable travel by train. The railroad system was to the 19th and early 20th centuries what the Interstate Highway System has been from the 1950s to today. Long distance air travel has taken some of the travel business, but it hasn't killed highway travel the way the highways and personal automobiles killed the railroad industry. Our present long-distance rail system, Amtrak, is heavily subsidized by the government, and many conservatives would like to see it disappear.
The Vanderbilts aren't anything like as rich and influential as they used to be, although a number of them continue in various fields of business. Most of the big Gilded Age family mansions were either torn down, sold, or turned into museums in the mid-20th century. Gloria, Anderson Cooper's mother, inherited several million dollars, but made her name in the fashion industry.