NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Michael McGerr, the Paul V. McNutt Professor of American History at Indiana University, will deliver the inaugural Vanderbilt Founder’s Day Lecture on Thursday, March 16. The lecture is in conjunction with the 133rd anniversary of the first gift of the university’s namesake patron, Cornelius Vanderbilt.
McGerr’s talk, “The Commodore’s Strange Gift: The Founding of Vanderbilt,” will take place at 5 p.m. in Wilson Hall, Room 103. “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt, the great steamboat and railroad magnate, was known for his obsession with making money and was almost as notorious for his lack of interest in charity and philanthropy. The lecture will unveil the surprising reasons behind Vanderbilt’s uncharacteristic decision to give the money to found Vanderbilt University in 1873.
McGerr, a former colleague of Vanderbilt Professor of History Richard Blackett, is writing a history of the Vanderbilt family titled ‘The Public Be Damned’: The Vanderbilts and the Unmaking of the Ruling Class.
“The book narrates the lives of seven generations of the Vanderbilts in order to explore the rule of the family, long the richest in the nation and probably the world, in shaping the culture and ambitions of the rich in industrial America,” McGerr said. “The Commodore’s endowment of the university is one of the key episodes that dramatizes the Vanderbilts’ growing determination to create a family dynasty that would dominate American public life.”
The Founder’s Day festivities continue on Friday, March 17, with a ceremony at 10 a.m. at the foot of the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt on the Kirkland Esplanade, located at the main campus entrance on West End Avenue between 21st and 23rd avenues.
Immediately following the laying of the wreaths at the statue of Cornelius Vanderbilt and at the gravesite of Bishop and Mrs. Holland McTyeire, coffee and birthday cake will be served in the second floor lobby of Kirkland Hall.
The lecture and ceremony are free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Terrace Place garage, located on Terrace Place between 21st and 20th avenues off of West End Avenue. For more information, call 322-2727 or 343-1579.
Media contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens, 615-322-NEWS
annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu