Charles Yerkes

Charles Tyson Yerkes (June 25, 1837 – December 29, 1905) was an American financier, born in Philadelphia. He played a major part in developing mass-transit systems in Chicago and London.

London
In August 1900, Yerkes decided to become involved in the development of the London Underground railway system after riding along the route of one proposed line and surveying the City of London from the summit of Hampstead Heath. He established the Underground Electric Railways Company of London to take control of the Metropolitan District Railway and the partly built Baker Street & Waterloo Railway; Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway; and Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway. Yerkes employed complex financial arrangements similar to those that he had used in America to raise the funds necessary to construct the new lines and electrify the District railway. In one of his last great triumphs, Yerkes managed to thwart an attempt by J. P. Morgan to enter the London Underground field.

Death and legacy
He died in New York aged 68 in 1905, a victim of kidney disease, before any of his works on the London railways were completed but with the construction well under way. Though initially estimated to be as high as twenty-two million dollars, Yerkes' fortune ended up being well less than one million dollars (equivalent to today's ) thanks to a vast number of debts.

The events of Yerkes' life served as a blueprint for the Theodore Dreiser novels, The Financier, The Titan and The Stoic, in which Yerkes was fictionalized as Frank Cowperwood.

The crater Yerkes on the Moon is named in his honor.

Yerkes and his wife Mary were painted by his favorite artist Jan van Beers (National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC). His wife, the daughter of Thomas Moore of Philadelphia, was also painted in 1892 by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947). In 1893 Müller-Ury painted from miniatures portraits of Yerkes' Quaker grandparents, Mr and Mrs Silas Yerkes.