Walk the streets of New York and you’ll pass by Carnegie Hall, One Vanderbilt, Rockefeller Center, and the Waldorf Astoria, structures ensuring the continued legacy of their Gilded-era heirs, headquartered at 240 Greenwich Street—may be slightly harder to find. Yet while Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt are long gone; and in many aspects—so are their cultivated fortunes—the Mellon family, billionaire founders of the bank that bears their name, maintains both their legacy and their fortune, a tricky balancing act that most of America’s grandest families failed to master.
Unlike many of their peers, and perhaps to their great benefit, the Mellon family is happiest out of the spotlight. Instead, their family legacy is most visible in its shaping of the American economy, from the U.S. industrial revolution into modern times, in both the private and public sectors. The family has itself helped found multiple industries, built historically significant companies, and weathered financial crises along the way that ruined many of their peers.
“THEIR FAMILY LEGACY IS MOST VISIBLE
