Financial Wizard, Politician, Art Collector
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Fortune: Founder of Mellon National Bank 
Legacy: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation 
Foundation Assets: $4,719,646,000
2003 Giving: $179,159,076
Major Funding Areas: higher education, arts, museums, conservation

Andrew W. Mellon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 25, 1855, to Irish Protestant immigrants Thomas Mellon and Sara Negley Mellon, who had settled in western Pennsylvania in 1818. Mellon arrived into a generation that would also produce financial wizards such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford and Morgan, but he would later distinguish himself among that elite group through additional successful endeavors in politics, art collecting and philanthropy.

Mellon graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, (formerly known as the University of Western Pennsylvania) in 1873. At the age of 17 he started a lumber business with his brother, Richard B. Mellon. Shortly thereafter the pair joined their father, Thomas Mellon, a Pittsburgh banker and judge, to help manage the family banking business known as T. Mellon and Sons.

Ownership of the family banking business was transferred to Andrew Mellon in 1882 at the age of 27, and in 1889 he helped develop the Union Trust Company and Union Savings Bank of Pittsburgh. Mellon also continued to invest heavily in companies with sharp entrepreneurial management in the fields of oil, steel, construction and shipbuilding. His financial assistance led to the founding of numerous successful major companies including Gulf Oil, Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA), Carborundum, and Koppers, all of which helped Mellon create a massive personal fortune.

In 1900, Mellon married Nora McMullen in Hertford, England. The couple had two children, son Paul, and daughter, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, both of whom would carry on their father’s tradition of philanthropy by establishing their own foundations.

The Mellon family’s substantial financial skills helped their bank become the leader in the transformation of western Pennsylvania into one of the wealthiest industrial areas in the United States during the four decades preceding World War I.

By 1914 Mellon had become one of the richest men in the United States. During the War years from 1914-18, he involved himself in a number of philanthropic and civic activities for organizations that included the American Red Cross, the National War Council of the Y.M.C.A., the Pennsylvania State Council of National Defense and the National Research Council.

Despite his great wealth, Mellon was still relatively unknown outside his home state. That changed in 1921, when he took a position with the U.S. Government as Secretary of the Treasury under President Warren Harding. During his tenure in office, Mellon garnered much public recognition as he enforced Prohibition, reduced taxes, and presided over a period of great financial prosperity that saw the national debt reduced by over 30 percent from $24.3 million to $16.1 million.

All the good Mellon had done was overlooked however, during the Great Stock Market crash of 1929. Although he personally survived the Crash, his business ties came into question - he would later be found not guilty of Tax Evasion for his 1931 tax return. In 1932 Mellon resigned from the Treasury and took a one-year position as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He retired from public life the following year and turned his attention to his art collection. Something that had been a hobby in Pennsylvania had turned into a passion upon his move to Washington.

Specializing in British portraits and Old Masters, by the early 1930s Mellon had amassed the greatest art collection of his generation. Ironically, his most cherished purchase as an art collector came at a time when his political career was floundering, when he purchased 21 master pieces from the Hermitage in Leningrad for $6 million.

During his retirement years, Mellon continued to be active both personally and financially in philanthropic endeavors that supported education, culture and research. Much of the $10 million he gave away during his lifetime went to educational institutions in his native Pittsburgh, but his most famous gift came in 1937, when he donated his art collection to establish the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

Interestingly, Mellon’s most precious gift to the nation came at the same time that he was being unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Government for tax evasion. Sadly, he didn’t live to see the judgment in his favour, which cleared him of all charges. Nor did he see the opening of the National Art Gallery. He died on August 27, 1937, in Southampton, Long Island, New York.

In 1940 Andrew Mellon’s daughter set up the Avalon Foundation and in 1941 his son established the Old Dominion Foundation. Both children were generous philanthropists during their lives and in 1969 they merged their two foundations in their father’s memory to form the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Andrew W. Mellon’s legacy continues to live on today not only through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which has over $4.7 billion in assets, but also through Mellon Financial Corporation, which controls over $500 billion in assets.

It seems only fitting that the corporation which bears the name of someone who gave so much to his country, was rated as America’s most desired company by Fortune Magazine on March 7, 2005. 

For more information about the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation please visit:
http://www.mellon.org/

For more information about Mellon Financial Corpoaration please visit:
http://www.mellon.com

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