Along with his financial acumen, Trask was a generous philanthropist, a leading patron of the arts, a strong supporter of education, and a champion of humanitarian causes.

Trask was often a supporter of new inventions in their experimental stages, having formed an early appreciation for the connection between technology, business and finance during his time at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn.

[3] He foresaw the potential of inventions such as the Marconi wireless telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the trolley car, and the automobile; "to all of these he gave of his time, his money and his judgment, to aid in their development.

With no close heirs, the Trasks began to entertain the idea of turning their 400-acre (1.6 km2), Saratoga Springs, New York estate into a working community of artists and writers.

Yaddo, the name of the estate, is said to have been coined by the Trask's young daughter Christina, who amused her father by her mispronunciation of the numerous dark spots on the lawn caused by the towering trees' shadows.

John Cheever once wrote that the "forty or so acres on which the principal buildings of Yaddo stand have seen more distinguished activity in the arts than any other piece of ground in the English-speaking community and perhaps the world".

Visitors from Cheever's Day include Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, Aaron Copland, Philip Guston, Patricia Highsmith, Langston Hughes, Ted Hughes, Alfred Kazin, Ulysses Kay, Jacob Lawrence, Flannery O'Connor, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Anne Porter, Mario Puzo, Clyfford Still, and Virgil Thomson.

Over the years, lecturers have included Niels Bohr on "The Structure of the Atom" (1923–1924); Arnold J. Toynbee on "Near Eastern Affairs" (1925–1926); T. S. Eliot on "The Bible and English Literature", (1932–1933); Bertrand Russell on "Mind and Matter" (1950–1951); and Margaret Mead on "Changing American Character" (1975–1976).

In 1896, a Thanksgiving appeal was launched nationwide, and Americans from St. Paul to San Francisco to Boston gave thanks by sending money to Armenian widows and orphans of the massacres.

[15] The success of Yaddo encouraged Spencer and Katrina to later donate land for a working women's retreat center as well, known as the Wiawaka Holiday House.