J. P. Morgan, Vanderbilt and Pulitzer's Private Island: The Jekyll Island Club
Where They Summered
895 views
Jekyll Island sits off the coast of Georgia, and in 1886 a group of the richest men in America bought the whole of it for $125,000 so that nobody could reach them.
J. P. Morgan. Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the newspapers the rest of them were trying to avoid. Marshall Field. William K. Vanderbilt. Membership was capped at one hundred and you could not buy your way in. They built a clubhouse, a row of houses they called cottages, and a wharf where their yachts came in, and for sixty one years no one set foot on that island who had not been invited.
What they were buying was not comfort. It was the certainty that nobody was watching. And they were not the first people to want that from this particular island.
In November 1910, six men travelled south under first names only, told the staff they had come to shoot ducks, and spent ten days writing a plan for the American banking system. They denied it for twenty years. Then, in 1947, the State of Georgia took the island off them by condemnation order and turned it into a public park.
ON THE RECORD
Six men are confirmed to have attended the 1910 conference: Nelson Aldrich, A. Piatt Andrew, Henry Davison, Frank Vanderlip, Paul Warburg and Arthur Shelton. Accounts differ on whether Benjamin Strong and Charles Norton were also present; Vanderlip recalled Strong being there, and most historians conclude he was not. The plan produced at Jekyll was a foundation for the debate that followed, not the Federal Reserve Act itself. Aldrich's bill failed, and the Act that passed in December 1913 placed public control over the structure, which is the thing the men on the island had not proposed. This video does not assert that the Federal Reserve was created in secret by six men, because that is not what the record shows.
SOURCES
Federal Reserve History, the Jekyll Island Conference
Jekyll Island Club Historic District, National Register documentation
Contemporary and later accounts of the 1910 meeting, including Frank Vanderlip's own recollections
Records of the Wanderer landing of 1858 and the subsequent federal prosecutions
State of Georgia records of the 1947 condemnation
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Wikimedia Commons
A NOTE ON THE IMAGERY
Some visuals in this video are illustrative reconstructions. Maps, buildings, floor plans and other features are approximate representations created to support the narration, and are not presented as original archival detail. Where genuine archival photographs and documents are used, their sources are credited above.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The Island Nobody Could Reach
1:24 What They Were Escaping
2:18 A Piece of Ground Nobody Wanted
3:06 The Wanderer
4:32 One Hundred Members
5:38 A Winter Colony with Rules
7:10 The People Who Stayed All Year
8:08 The Call That Crossed a Continent
9:00 The Panic of Nineteen Oh Seven
10:53 The First Name Club
12:59 What the Plan Actually Became
14:49 The Last Seasons
15:44 Condemned
17:03 What They Were Really Buying
If you like the stories of the fortunes that decided where America would be built, and what became of what they built, subscribe.
Where They Summered. Following American fortunes to the world's most exclusive destinations.
#JekyllIsland #JPMorgan #GildedAge #AmericanHistory #OldMoney #Georgia #RobberBarons #FederalReserve #GildedAgeHistory #PrivateIsland
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J. P. Morgan, Vanderbilt and Pulitzer's Private Island: The Jekyll Island Club
Where They Summered
895 views
Jekyll Island sits off the coast of Georgia, and in 1886 a group of the richest men in America bought the whole of it for $125,000 so that nobody could reach them.
J. P. Morgan. Joseph Pulitzer, who owned the newspapers the rest of them were trying to avoid. Marshall Field. William K. Vanderbilt. Membership was capped at one hundred and you could not buy your way in. They built a clubhouse, a row of houses they called cottages, and a wharf where their yachts came in, and for sixty one years no one set foot on that island who had not been invited.
What they were buying was not comfort. It was the certainty that nobody was watching. And they were not the first people to want that from this particular island.
In November 1910, six men travelled south under first names only, told the staff they had come to shoot ducks, and spent ten days writing a plan for the American banking system. They denied it for twenty years. Then, in 1947, the State of Georgia took the island off them by condemnation order and turned it into a public park.
ON THE RECORD
Six men are confirmed to have attended the 1910 conference: Nelson Aldrich, A. Piatt Andrew, Henry Davison, Frank Vanderlip, Paul Warburg and Arthur Shelton. Accounts differ on whether Benjamin Strong and Charles Norton were also present; Vanderlip recalled Strong being there, and most historians conclude he was not. The plan produced at Jekyll was a foundation for the debate that followed, not the Federal Reserve Act itself. Aldrich's bill failed, and the Act that passed in December 1913 placed public control over the structure, which is the thing the men on the island had not proposed. This video does not assert that the Federal Reserve was created in secret by six men, because that is not what the record shows.
SOURCES
Federal Reserve History, the Jekyll Island Conference
Jekyll Island Club Historic District, National Register documentation
Contemporary and later accounts of the 1910 meeting, including Frank Vanderlip's own recollections
Records of the Wanderer landing of 1858 and the subsequent federal prosecutions
State of Georgia records of the 1947 condemnation
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Wikimedia Commons
A NOTE ON THE IMAGERY
Some visuals in this video are illustrative reconstructions. Maps, buildings, floor plans and other features are approximate representations created to support the narration, and are not presented as original archival detail. Where genuine archival photographs and documents are used, their sources are credited above.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The Island Nobody Could Reach
1:24 What They Were Escaping
2:18 A Piece of Ground Nobody Wanted
3:06 The Wanderer
4:32 One Hundred Members
5:38 A Winter Colony with Rules
7:10 The People Who Stayed All Year
8:08 The Call That Crossed a Continent
9:00 The Panic of Nineteen Oh Seven
10:53 The First Name Club
12:59 What the Plan Actually Became
14:49 The Last Seasons
15:44 Condemned
17:03 What They Were Really Buying
If you like the stories of the fortunes that decided where America would be built, and what became of what they built, subscribe.
Where They Summered. Following American fortunes to the world's most exclusive destinations.
#JekyllIsland #JPMorgan #GildedAge #AmericanHistory #OldMoney #Georgia #RobberBarons #FederalReserve #GildedAgeHistory #PrivateIsland