biography
| name: |
Vanderbilt, George Washington
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1862–1914)
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| biography:
| Capitalist, forestry pioneer, and agriculturist, born on Staten I, New York, USA. The grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt and son of William Henry Vanderbilt, he was privately tutored and became a world traveller, speaking eight languages. In 1889, in love with the Appalachian Mts of North Carolina, he began buying land (totalling 130 000 acres) near Asheville, NC, and proceeded to study forestry, architecture, and landscape gardening. The architect of his $3 million estate, ‘Biltmore’, was Richard Morris Hunt. Frederick Law Olmsted was his landscape gardener, and Gifford Pinchot was placed in charge of the forest. Moving to ‘Biltmore’ in 1896, Vanderbilt became a pioneer in forestry science, and on his acreage he founded the Biltmore nursery, which specialized in trees and plants of the Appalachian region, and the Biltmore School of Forestry. He also bred hogs and cows and sold the meat and dairy products, and his advanced agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry practices served to inspire similar reforms throughout the South. Among his benefactions was the Jackson Square branch of the New York Public Library, and the ground on which Columbia University's Teacher's College was built. |
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