FROM MEDICI TO BOURBON - Newport Mansions

Chapter 2: In Search of Taste
William Henry Vanderbilt’s 1885 will arranged for a modified primogeniture
for the third generation males. Eldest sons Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843-1899) and
William K. Vanderbilt (1849-1920) received the largest portion of the $200 million
estate, each being given over $50 million each. 54 The equal distribution of wealth
between the elder brothers was recognized as being a reward for the junior daughter-
in-law, Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt’s successful campaign to launch the family into
the select inner circle of New York society. Key to this perception was her
motivating role in the construction of the elder brothers’ own Fifth Avenue
residences, contemporary with their father’s, and built between 1878 and 1883 with
the fruits of the Commodore, their grandfather’s, bequest. These highly visible
townhouses quickly realized Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt’s Medicean prophecy. By
1892 the economist George Gunton claimed that the Vanderbilt mansions led to a new
direction of devoting American wealth to the uplifting of the national standard of taste
and social distinction. 55 Gunton beheld in such ostentation the promise for America
of entering upon the threshold of the ‘leisured phase of its societary development’. 56
William and Alva Vanderbilt were first to answer the call by erecting, at 660
Fifth Avenue, a then unique in America, urban, limestone-clad, château de la Loire,
designed by the socially prominent gentleman-architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827-
54 Four daughters (Margaret, Emily, Florence and Eliza) and two younger sons (Frederick and George)
received the houses they lived in, $5 million each and one-eighth of the annual income on an additional
$40 million in trust for life.
55 Simon Bronner, ‘Reading Consumer Consumption’ in Consuming Visions: Accumulation and
Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920, ED. Simon Bronner, New York, 1989, p. 23.
56 Ibid, p. 23.
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