The story of the Cornelius Vanderbilt II mansion begins the same way New York’s other Gilded Age palaces got their start: with a socially prominent family in need of a showpiece of a home.
In 1879, Cornelius and Alice Vanderbilt—who had been living in fine style in a home on Fifth Avenue and 32nd Street—”commissioned George B. Post to design their new house on the lot they had purchased on the corner of 57th and Fifth,” states Wayne Craven in his book, Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society.
Cornelius “Corneil” Vanderbilt II was the favorite grandson of railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. He and his wife, Alice Claypoole Gwynne Vanderbilt had seven children throughout their long and apparently happy marriage.
They also had Corneil’s $70 million inheritance, plus his earnings as president of the New York Central Railroad, to spend on a lavish Fifth Avenue home steps away from Vanderbilt Row. This stretch of Fifth Avenue had been colonized by other Vanderbilts—included William K. and Alva Vanderbilt, who built their “Petit Chateau” on Fifth and 53rd Street.
A decade after Alice (below, in 1880) and Corneil’s mansion was completed in 1883 (second image), the couple embarked on a renovation and expansion—spurred on by competition with Alva Vanderbilt and other Gilded Age movers and shakers who were building more extravagant houses.
Corneil bought and bulldozed several existing homes on the block; Post again was commissioned (with help from architect Richard Morris Hunt) to more than double the size of the original house.
Spanning Fifth Avenue from 57th to 58th Street, the renovated limestone and brick palace (top image) now boasted 137 rooms across six floors, including 37 bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, various salon rooms, a grand dining room that doubled as an art gallery, and a Louis XIV-inspired ballroom, according to The Gilded Age Era blog.
Ornate detailing, stained glass windows, and mosaics by artists like Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge decorated the interior rooms. The porte-cochere at the entrance contained six sculptured reliefs by Karl Bitter of boys and girls singing. A tall iron fence and gates surrounded the property.
After dropping an estimated $3 million over more than a decade, Corneil and Alice finally had the home they desired—one that earned the title of the largest private residence ever built in New York City. But not long after the expansion was completed in 1894, the beginning of the end commenced.
In September 1899, Corneil, 55, died in his mansion of a cerebral hemorrhage. His health had already been diminished after he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1896.
Alice continued living in the house, helped along by a $7 million trust fund her husband left her to help maintain the Fifth Avenue home as well as the couple’s spectacular Newport residence, The Breakers. Beset by grief, she dialed back her social appointments and sequestered inside—along with a staff of over 30 servants.
As the early 20th century continued, the opulence of the Gilded Age began to be viewed as gauche and excessive. Fifth Avenue remained the city’s most impressive address, but the residences just south of Central Park were being replaced by banks and retail stores. (Below, Everett Shinn’s “The Old Vanderbilt House.”)
Architectural styles also changed. Instead of commissioning a mansion that mimicked a chateau or palazzo, many of New York’s rich were migrating to luxury apartment buildings—where they no longer had to manage a staff of servants and pay ever-increasing property taxes.
The cost of maintaining her Fifth Avenue mansion began to hit Alice hard. “The upkeep of the place was a burden on the estate, and its neighborhood encroached upon by business was no longer considered suitable for residential purposes,” wrote the New York Times in 1934.
It didn’t help that the Pulitzer Fountain had gone up right outside her bedroom in 1916, and the naked backside of the female figure gracing the fountain reportedly shocked her. All of these factors contributed to Alice’s leaving her mansion for a more manageable residence at 857 Fifth Avenue owned by her son-in-law.
The Fifth Avenue mansion’s days were now numbered. “The mansion became unused and boarded up, a white elephant amid the commercial establishments that began to encapsulate it,” wrote Craven.
In 1925, Alice “applied to the Supreme Court today for permission to sell the Vanderbilt mansion at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, for $7,100,000 cash,” reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in August of that year. (Why she had to apply for permission isn’t clear; perhaps it had to do with the legalities of the trust she was left by her husband.)
A year later, the mansion was sold for close to her asking price. “One week before it was scheduled to suffer the fate of the wrecker’s ball, in January 1927, she arranged to have the house opened to the public, charging fifty cents’ admission to raise money for charity,” stated Craven. “The public flocked to see how the highest of High Society had lived during an era that was by then fading.”
During the spring of 1927, New York City’s largest private residence became a demolition site (above photo). In its place one year later rose Bergdorf Goodman. The elegant department store has now occupied this stretch of Fifth Avenue for almost a century—more than twice as long as Corneil and Alice’s mansion stood.
Alice, still living at 857 Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, died in 1934 at age 88. Like her mansion, she outlived the Gilded Age.
[Top image: Alamy; second, third, fourth, and fifth images: Wikipedia; sixth image: Everett Shinn; seventh image: Larry Froeber/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images; eighth image: Bain Collection/LOC]
Ephemeral New York 