He gave for the removing of the obelisk from Egypt to Central Park, $103,000; to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York City, $500,000. His daughter Emily, wife of William D. Sloan, gave a Maternity Home in connection with the college, costing $250,000. Mr. Vanderbilt's four sons, Cornelius, William, Frederick, and George, have erected a building for clinical instruction as a memorial of their father.
Mr. Vanderbilt gave $100,000 each to the Home and Foreign Missions of the Primitive Episcopal Church, to the New York Missions of that church, to St. Luke's Hospital, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the United Brethren Church at New Dorp, Staten Island, and to the Young Men's Christian Association. He gave $50,000 each to the Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, the New York Bible Society, the Home for Incurables, Seamen's Society, New York Home for Intemperate Men, and the American Museum of Natural History.
Cornelius Vanderbilt, the grandson of Commodore Vanderbilt, has given $10,000 for the library, and $20,000 for the Hall of Mechanical Engineering of Vanderbilt University. He has also given a building to Yale College in memory of his son, a large building at the corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street to his railroad employees for reading, gymnasium hall, bathrooms, etc., $100,000 for the Protestant Cathedral, and much to other good works.
Another son of William H., George W. Vanderbilt, who is making at his home in Asheville, N.C., a collection as complete as possible of all trees and plants, established the Thirteenth Street Branch of The Free Circulating Library in New York City, in July, 1888, and has supported a normal training-school.
A daughter of William H., Mrs. Elliott F. Shepard, has given to the Young Women's Christian Association in New York the Margaret Louisa Home, 14 and 16 East Sixteenth Street, a handsome and well-appointed structure where working-women can find a temporary home and comfort. The limit of time for each guest is four weeks. The house contains fifty-eight single and twenty-one double rooms. It has proved a great blessing to those who are strangers in a great city, and need inexpensive and respectable surroundings.
It is stated in the press that Mrs. Frederick Vanderbilt uses a generous portion of her income in preparing worthy young women for some useful position in life,—as nurses, or in sewing or art, each individual having $500 expended for such training.