Vanderpoel, Halsted B.

Biographical / Historical Note

Halsted Billings Vander Poel (variant form VanderPoel) was born in 1911 at the family estate in New York City. He graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1935 and then served in the Navy in World War II. After the war, he married, moved to Washington, D.C. and worked in the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.

While still at Yale, Vander Poel developed a strong interest in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English literature and soon began collecting books and manuscripts. Vander Poel quickly became established as a serious collector, and broadened his range to include Old Master paintings, American portraits and English furniture and silver.

In 1956, Vander Poel moved to Rome. There he was involved in various cultural and educational projects, including the restoration of frescoes in Roman churches, and the administration of the Keats-Shelley Memorial House at the Spanish Steps. In 1964, he was one of the founders of St. Stephen's School, an American preparatory school in Rome.

In Rome, Vander Poel met two archaeologists, Matteo Della Corte, a former Director of Excavations at Pompeii, and Tatiana Warscher, a leading historiographer of the site, and through them became fascinated with Pompeii. For the next forty years, Vander Poel devoted considerable time and financial resources to creating an extensive research library and archive on the archaeological investigations in Pompeii.

In 1997 Vander Poel returned to the United States for health reasons. He died in Washington D.C. on June 27, 2003.