Two Vanderbilt sisters, two eclectic Fifth Avenue mansions given as wedding gifts

For much of the Gilded Age, the spacious and tidy residential blocks on Fifth Avenue between 50th Street and Central Park South were New York City’s millionaire mile.

The members of one supremely rich and famous family in particular made their homes here: the Vanderbilts.

During the late 19th century, eight Vanderbilt-occupied mansions of varying sizes and styles lined this stretch of Fifth Avenue. For this the area earned the nickname “Vanderbilt Row”—or “Vanderbilt Alley,” as more cheeky city residents called it.

Though all were demolished by the end of the 1920s, some of these legendary houses remain well-known. There’s William H. Vanderbilt’s “Triple Palace,” a restrained brownstone single mansion and double mansion between 51st and 52nd Streets (below).

Here, this son of Commodore Vanderbilt lived with his wife, as well as his married adult daughters Emily and Margaret and their families.

Across 52nd Street was “petit chateau,” the French Renaissance spectacle built by William H.’s son William K., and his social-climbing wife, Alva. Spanning 58th to 59th Streets stood the 137-room Medieval-like mansion owned by son Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife, Alice.

But two other Vanderbilt mansions in between these palaces also loomed over Fifth Avenue, at the southwest corner a few doors up from St. Thomas Church. Yet these two adjoining houses, Numbers 680 and 684 Fifth Avenue (top photo), have been strangely forgotten.

Perhaps it’s because the two Vanderbilt sisters who resided here were not as socially prominent as sisters-in-law Alva and Alice. Or maybe it’s because each of these “townhouses,” as they were known, were architectural mishmashes without the handsome lines or French-inspired amazingness of the Vanderbilt dwellings surrounding them.

Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly (above, in an 1890 portrait by John Singer Sargent), the sixth of William H.’s nine children, resided at Number 684 with her husband, financial advisor Hamilton McKown Twombly. Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb (below), the eighth child in the family, took up residence at Number 680 with her spouse, Dr. William Seward Webb.

Both mansions were built in the mid-1880s. A New York Times piece says that Eliza’s mansion was a wedding gift from her father; Florence’s neighboring mansion was as well.

Both were also designed by John Snook, the architect responsible for the Vanderbilt Triple Palace as well as Commodore Vanderbilt’s 1871 Grand Central Depot. Snook’s style for the two mansions was certainly eclectic: a little Flemish with the stepped roofs, touches of French Renaissance in the turrets, and a bit of Queen Anne thrown in with the chimneys and bays.

The exteriors of both homes were a confusing but wondrous jumble. Inside, both sisters and their families entertained and enjoyed the Gilded Age good life.

In 1892, the sisters held joint leap year dinner parties, followed by a dance in Eliza’s reception room. “The party, however, was not a large one, only about 100 invitations having been sent out,” the New York Times reported days later on January 24.

Eliza also held a cotillion at her home in 1895 for about 130 guests, again reported in the Times. In the early 1900s, she hosted small dances and dinners for her daughter Fredericka, introducing her into society.

But wealth and social standing didn’t insulate the sisters from tragedies. On New Year’s Day in 1896, Florence’s teenage daughter, Alice Twombly, died of pneumonia at her family country estate in Madison, New Jersey. The funeral was held on January 4 at the Fifth Avenue mansion, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Ten years later, Florence’s 18-year-old Harvard-bound son, Hamilton Jr., drowned in a New Hampshire lake while his parents and siblings were living in their summer home in Newport. Four years after the boy’s death, Hamilton Twombly, Sr. passed away—his death partly attributed to the devastating loss of his only son.

By now, Vanderbilt Row was changing, with commercial buildings encroaching on what had been an exclusively residential enclave. Number 680 was the first of the two neighbor mansions to go down. Put on the market in 1913, it was leased by John D. Rockefeller, whose own mansion was just up the block.

Rockefeller soon replaced the Webb house with a contemporary building (above, in 1927). Eliza and her husband moved permanently to their farm in Shelbourne, Vermont, where she passed away in 1936.

The Twombly mansion, cleaved from its once-adjoining neighbor, managed to stand until the 1920s. Rockefeller purchased that one as well, tearing it down and putting up a second modern building that perfectly matched the one next door.

Florence Twombly relocated in 1926 to a new, 70-room home at the new millionaire mile along Upper Fifth Avenue at 71st Street (above, in 1931). The last granddaughter of Commodore Vanderbilt and one of the final remaining family members who recall the Gilded Age glory days of Vanderbilt Row, she died at age 98 in 1952.

The sisters’ mansions, like all the others from Vanderbilt Row, are merely ghosts in the contemporary city.

[Top image: Wikipedia; second image: NYPL Digital Collection; third image: Wikipedia; fourth image: MCNY, 93.1.1.18038; fifth image: NYPL Digital Collection; sixth image: MCNY, X2010.7.2.14051]

The 57th Street mansion built as a wedding gift

The happy couple were the children of two of New York’s wealthiest Gilded Age families.

Maria Louise Vanderbilt Shepard (right), the 21-year-old great-granddaughter of Commodore Vanderbilt, married William Jay Shieffelin, 25 (below), in February 1891.

Louise, as she seems to have been known, came from a family that made its riches in the shipping industry and by investing in railroads.

William’s family operated a wholesale drug company founded in 1793, and he was also a descendant of John Jay, the first chief justice.

The joining of two prominent families through marriage called for an extravagant wedding, and the couple enjoyed quite a celebration at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church on February 5 of that year.

The next day, a “wedding breakfast” for 600 guests was held in the “grand picture gallery” of Louise’s grandfather W.K. Vanderbilt’s magnificent triple-wide, three-family mansion at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street, wrote author Wayne Craven in his book, Gilded Mansions.

The breakfast netted the newlyweds incredible gifts; an article covering the wedding in the New York Times noted the “many articles of silver and jewels.”

But perhaps the most amazing gift was the one Louise’s mother gave the couple: A fully furnished house (above and at right).

That house is the building still standing at 35 West 57th Street. Images of it from the 1890s weren’t available, but these photos from 1940 show it off nicely: a brownstone beauty with Beaux Arts touches, like the two-story bow window, ornamental carvings, and the petite balcony on the fifth floor.

When the couple moved in, the East 50s off Fifth Avenue was a residential enclave crawling with rich Vanderbilt family members, including Cornelius Vanderbilt II, whose spectacular mansion was just down the block at One West 57th Street.

Amazingly, the couple only lived in their extravagant wedding gift until 1898.

“William and Louise lived in the West 57th Street house throughout the 1890s, until the hustle and bustle of that area made the residence undesirable,” wrote Craven.

Louise’s mother purchased their next home as well, a Richard Morris Hunt–designed mansion on East 66th Street. At some point, the two left that house too and took up apartment living, which was now in vogue.

The Shepard-Shieffelins had eight kids and remained married for 57 years, until Louise’s death at age 78 in 1948.

And what about their wedding present on West 57th Street?

The 20th century wasn’t kind to it. At some point, the first two floors were turned into commercial spaces, and the decorative touches left to the elements. Now that the neighboring townhouses to the east are gone, the house clings to the building on its right, looking unloved and alone.

The fate of 35 West 57th Street remains to be seen. But what a joyous start it had 128 years ago!

[Top image: New-York Historical Society; second image: Find a Grave; third and fourth images: NYC Department of Records 1940 Tax Photos; eighth image: NYPL, 1928]

Genteel Fifth Avenue at the turn of the century

Could this really be Fifth Avenue in the 50s, today one of the most expensive stretches of retail in the world?

The street sign appears to read 52nd Street. That means the two mansions on the left belong to the Vanderbilt family, as does the French chateau-like mansion next door.

That’s the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church at 55th Street rising in the center of the postcard.