Albert Joseph Vander Naillen Sr.

Albert Joseph Vander Naillen Sr. (1830 – 1928) was a Belgian-born engineer, surveying-geometrician, and author who established the short-lived Vander Naillen School of Engineering in Chicago. After graduating as a surveying-geometrician from the University of Ghent and receiving a special royal commission in Belgium, he immigrated to the United States in 1859. He contributed his technical expertise as a civil engineer during the American Civil War and worked in Chicago after the war before founding the Vander Naillen School of Practical Engineering. This innovative institution was designed to provide rapid, hands-on technical training, but its physical campus was completely destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.

Following the devastating fire, Vander Naillen relocated to California, where he successfully rebuilt and expanded his engineering school in San Francisco. This campus was also ill-fated, being destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire, after which the school was again refounded in Oakland. Nevertheless, under Vander Naillen’s leadership, the institution became a premier training ground for hundreds of surveyors and engineers who helped build the American West’s infrastructure.

In his later years, Vander Naillen transitioned into a celebrated author of mystical and occult literature, publishing works such as In the Sanctuary and On the Heights of Himalay. He passed away in Oakland, California, at age 98, leaving a dual legacy as a pioneer of practical technical education and an influential philosophical writer. His children, Albert J. Vander Naillen Jr., Edmund L. Vander Naillen, and Gertrude Vander Naillen, were also deeply involved in the institution, which closed in 1917 because of the First World War, with its equipment and books handed over to the U.S. government to train military engineers.

Albert J. Vander Naillen Jr. (1858 – 1956) worked as the deputy county surveyor for Alameda County for nearly thirty years, while Edmund L. Vander Naillen worked as an engineer in California, Hawaii, and Mexico, designing levees along the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers and a narrow-gauge railroad on Maui for the Spreckels Sugar Co.