Gulian C. Verplanck

Gulian Crommelin Verplanck (August 6, 1786 – March 18, 1870) was an American attorney, politician, and writer. He was elected to the New York State Assembly and Senate, and later to the United States House of Representatives from New York, where he served as Chairman of the influential House Ways and Means Committee.

He served in a number of appointed positions of major institutions in New York: governor of New York Hospital; regent of the University of the State of New York, where in 1858 he became its Vice Chancellor, serving until his death more than a decade later; and President of the Board of Commissioners of Immigration for more than two decades.

Verplanck published articles and poetry in the North American Review, and was counted among the "Knickerbocker group". As a young man, he was among the organizers of the American Academy of the Fine Arts in New York City, which opened in 1802. It was intended to promote the study of classical art and help establish the city as a center of art. With tastes changing, it closed in 1840.

Verplanck was born in the family mansion at 3 Wall Street in New York City, the son of Congressman Daniel C. Verplanck and his wife, descendants of Dutch colonists. When his widowed father remarried in 1789, Gulian was brought up by his paternal grandmother, Judith Crommelin Verplanck. He graduated B.A. from Columbia College in 1801, "read law" with Edward Livingston Verplanck was admitted to the bar in 1807 and had a law office at 51 Wall Street. In 1811 he was fined $200 for inciting a riot at a Columbia College commencement at Trinity Church when the presiding officer declined to confer a degree upon a student who had made political statements with which the faculty disagreed. Mayor DeWitt Clinton presided over the trial, and as he was seeking Federalist support against President James Madison in the upcoming election, it was thought that this may have influenced his conduct of the trial.

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