Anthony Joseph Drexel

• Born: September 13, 1826
• Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Died: June 30, 1893
• Place of death: Carlsbad, Bohemia (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic)

American banker and landowner

Drawing on substantial wealth derived from his successes in banking and real estate ventures, Drexel became a major philanthropist, founding the Drexel Institute of Science and Technology (now known as Drexel University) in 1891. He also established a network of brokerage houses and financial institutions with offices in New York, San Francisco, London, and Paris.

Sources of wealth: Inheritance; banking; real estate

Bequeathal of wealth: Relatives; charity; educational institution

Early Life

A member of a prominent Philadelphia family deeply involved in banking, brokerage, and finance, Anthony Joseph Drexel (DREHK-suhl) got an early start in his family’s enterprises. At the age of thirteen, he took his first job at the banking institution founded in 1836 by Francis Martin Drexel, his Austrian-born father. Possessed of a singular aptitude for banking and finance, young Drexel was a fast learner and an enthusiastic and imaginative businessman. When he was twenty-one, he became a partner in his father’s financial firm, Drexel and Company, the corporation that would soon become Drexel Burnham Lambert, one of the most distinguished financial houses in the United States.

First Ventures

Five years after the death of his father in 1863, Drexel, growing restless and eager to expand, left his father’s firm to establish a new banking corporation, Drexel, Harjes and Company, which he founded with his partners, John H. Harjes and Eugene Winthrop, in 1868. This company, based in Paris, had a broad international reach. Drexel had greatly increased his fortune during the post-Civil War building boom, for much of which Drexel’s company arranged financing. Investment banker Jay Cooke provided considerable sums for the Union cause during the Civil War, and most of this funding derived from the patronage of Drexel’s corporations.

Mature Wealth

Drexel obtained the funding for George Child to purchase the Philadelphia Public Ledger, the first newspaper in the United States to be both politically independent and highly successful. Drexel became a partner with Child in the newspaper. When Drexel’s former office boy, Henry Codman Potter, became a bishop in the Episcopal Church, Drexel worked with him to bring about the construction of the largest church in the United States, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. Much of the funding for constructing the cathedral was obtained through Drexel’s efforts. When his niece, Katharine Drexel, began to establish an innovative network of schools throughout the United States for African Americans and Native Americans, something almost unimaginable in the last half of the nineteenth century, Drexel not only arranged much of the financing for this enterprise but also made substantial personal contributions to these schools. Katharine, founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, devoted her life to working with minorities, and in recognition of this work she was beatified, achieving sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church in October, 2000.

Drexel had a unique skill in arranging the issuance of government bonds as they were being prepared for marketing. This was a profitable undertaking and helped to establish Drexel as a trustworthy financier who could be depended upon to deal efficiently and honestly with complex financial matters. He also excelled in helping the rapidly expanding American railway system to garner the extensive financing it required. Meanwhile, Drexel was much involved in providing the American mining industry with the needed financial resources for its expansion. Ever devoted to Philadelphia, Drexel bought considerable real estate in the city and its environs, becoming one of the largest property holders in the area.

Despite his prominence in banking circles, Drexel was an intensely private person. He declined to be interviewed and did not keep a diary or a journal. Although he was often encouraged to enter the political arena, he always refused. He destroyed most of his personal papers. Most important, however, he was a highly moral person about whom there was never any breath of scandal, financial or sexual.

So socially withdrawn was Drexel that when Drexel Institute held its opening ceremonies on December 17, 1891, an event attended by an estimated two thousand people, Drexel declined to attend, explaining that he was still in mourning for his wife, Ellen, who had died three months earlier. The opening of the institution was marked by the attendance of such notables as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, J. P. Morgan, Vice President Levi P. Morton, three members of President Benjamin Harrison’s cabinet, U.S. senator Chauncey Depew, and dozens of other luminaries. The establishment of Drexel Institute was as much Ellen’s idea as it was her husband’s. The last public event that she hosted in her suburban Lansdowne home, Runnymeade, was a reception for people who had been instrumental in establishing the school.

Although Drexel had derived a great deal of his educational philosophy from his niece, Katharine, he had definite ideas regarding education. He had the good sense, however, to realize that conditions change and the institutions that serve people best are those that remain flexible. He did not, therefore, impose his ideas on Drexel Institute.

Drexel’s greatest gift was his ability to help people discover their own deep-seated potential and flourish as a result of such discoveries. Prominent among those he influenced in this way were Morgan, Cooke, Child, and his niece, Katharine, who was close to her uncle. Morgan was an underachiever. He lacked self-confidence and seemed to be headed nowhere until, at the urging of his father, Junius Spencer Morgan, Drexel became involved in the young man’s life. However, Drexel did not receive full credit for affecting Morgan’s life, largely because all of the papers relating to Drexel were destroyed on his orders, whereas the Morgan papers have been preserved.

J. P. Morgan and Company, which became one of the world’s most celebrated banking establishments, was actually founded by Drexel, not by Morgan. Drexel and Morgan became partners in 1871 with the founding of Drexel, Morgan and Company. This new partnership was based in New York City, but it served as an agent for Europeans investing in the United States. When Drexel, Morgan was established, Drexel Harjes, now in business for three years, became the French affiliate for the banking corporation that would eventually be called J. P. Morgan and Company and was later known as J. P. Morgan Chase.

The Drexel-Morgan partnership was very strong and had a vast impact upon the growth of industry in the United States. Drexel, Morgan and Company and J. P. Morgan and Company were responsible for the financing that led to the establishment of three corporate giants, General Electric Company, International Harvester Corporation, and United States Steel Corporation (better known as U.S. Steel), to say nothing of many smaller companies. United States Steel, which Morgan took over from Carnegie, became the world’s first billion-dollar corporation.

Legacy

Drexel died in 1893. Upon his death, it was revealed that he had left Drexel Institute $1 million and much of his valuable art collection. He also provided every clerk at Drexel and Company with $100 for every year of service. He had established three trusts for family members. His estate was valued at between $25 and $35 million, the largest on record in Pennsylvania at that time.

Besides his corporate contributions, Drexel’s legacy was firmly established with his founding of the Drexel Institute of Technology. This institution embodied an educational and social philosophy that was unique at the end of the nineteenth century, a philosophy completely compatible with the democratic ideals of the United States.

Bibliography

Gallman, J. Matthew. Mastering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia During the Civil War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. This reprint of Gallman’s 1990 study has valuable information on how Drexel helped to finance the Union cause.

Geisst, Charles R. Wall Street: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Provides valuable insights into Drexel’s role in making Wall Street the financial center of the United States.

Papadakis, Constantine. Drexel University: A University with a Difference—the Unique Vision of Anthony J. Drexel. New York: The Newcomen Society of the United States, 2001. A brief, lucid overview of Drexel University written by its president.

Rottenberg, Dan. The Man Who Made Wall Street: Anthony J. Drexel and the Rise of Modern Finance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. A comprehensive assessment of Drexel and his contributions to finance and to American education.

Strouse, Jean. Morgan: American Financier. New York: Random House, 1999. An extensive study of the rise of J. P. Morgan and of his financial relationship to Drexel, who helped to subdue some of Morgan’s excesses.