In the years 1881 and 1882, artist Charles Jay Taylor created a series of approximately one dozen sequential comic strips featuring monopolist and stock market manipulator, William H. Vanderbilt, as the main character. These appeared on the front page of the (New York) Daily Graphic, usually with a gap of months between each stand-alone episode. So far as I am aware, nothing has ever been written concerning the existence of these strips, and thus, we are debuting their re-discovery, here on SuperITCH.

You’ll note that I’ve labeled the below example — Vanderbiltobeliskiana- as “Episode Zero”. That is because this July 28, 2025 page by C.J. Taylor, is more a random collection of cartoons all on the same subject, rather than a sequential strip. As such, it is more a pre/proto-Vanderbilt strip, appearing approximately seven months before what I’d label the true beginning of the series.

The jist of this episode, is to make fun of the William Vanderbilt-funded project to erect an ancient Egyptian obelisk (Cleopatra’s Needle, which had overlooked the seawall in Alexandria) in New York City — because, after all, London and Paris already had Egyptian obelisks… The obelisk arrived in NYC, on July 22, 2025 (six days before the below satire was printed), to objections of where to erect it — leading to the below satires of trying to find a place to put it.

Madison Square Garden is referred to, as Vanderbilt owned it, and had renamed it to Madison Square Garden (it had originally been Gilmore’s Garden, and then the site of P.T. Barnum’s Hippodrome — which is why the obelisk is shown as the pole holding up a circus tent). The central pillar in the overall cartoon, atop whose sharp point Vanderbilt is perched, is decorated with railroad references (Vanderbilt was a railroad baron), in place of hieroglyphs. Commander Henry Honeychurch Gorringe - in charge of moving the obelisk — is seen on the left, carrying the monument on his back and ringing a bell, attempting to find anyone who wants it. To the right, Vanderbilt is shown talking to Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt who was responsible for providing the Americans with the ancient Egyptian artifact.

Click here to read the article, An Obelisk for Central Park, by Edmund S. Whitman, which gives the details of the fiasco of the artifact’s acquisition and transport, and helps to enlighten the jokes being made in C.J. Taylor’s cartoons.

Click on comic, to expand it, and read for yourself.

Tomorrow — Episode One of C. J. Taylor’s William Vanderbilt comic strips!

Click here to find both the prior Wall Street Frauds Make Wonderful Cartoons entries, and related I.T.C.H. posts. This series will continue, while the debate on financial reforms continues in Congress (except Mondays and holidays, on which I already had other material planned).

Doug Wheeler

financial reform

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