National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

The Gilded Age and Country Places
seasons and gave at least two balls of note, they soon tired of the social pressures of Newport
and looked to the Hudson Valley instead.
The Adirondacks were the antithesis of Newport in their remoteness and the
combination of privacy and casual lifestyle. The mountains possessed an unspoiled and
dramatic beauty. The great Adirondack houses were known as "camps," connoting a rustic and
rough element that was distinctive. A camp was usually composed of numerous buildings,
segregated according to particular functions. Lila Vanderbilt Webb, Frederick's favorite sister
and her husband had a camp called Nehasane. It was among the largest camps and
encompassed a huge tract of land. Frederick built a Japanese Camp on Upper St. Regis Lake in
1902, on land he had purchased from his brother-in-law Hamilton Twombly. His interest in the
Adirondacks was brief, and he sold the camp in 1913 to Herbert L. Pratt of New York.
Bar Harbor is a rocky island located off the coast of Maine. Its beginnings as a resort can
be traced to the 1850s when it was largely frequented by Bostonians. After the Civil War,
tourism increased and several large hotels were constructed. This lifestyle was eclipsed by the
construction of "cottages," not unlike those of Newport. Bar Harbor boasted dramatic seaside
scenery with a wild beauty that many Bar Harborites enjoyed during long walks. "To walking
was added in 1896, another distinction for Bar Harbor. In that year Barrett Wendell, Professor
of English at Harvard, announced to the waiting world . . . that 'Bar Harbor was the scene of
the best conversation to be found anywhere in America.'" 113
While it was one of the more social
resorts, it was not as competitive or closed as Newport. In its heyday from the 1890s to World
War I it attracted people not only from Boston but also from New York and Philadelphia.
Several of the Vanderbilts built houses including George at Point d'Acadie. Frederick joined
him in 1915 two years after selling his Japanese Camp in the Adirondacks. Many of the Bar
Harbor vacationers brought their yachts and anchored them off the coast. Margaret Shepard,
Frederick's oldest sister, and two of her married daughters and their families, the Schieffelins
and Fabbris, also had houses in Bar Harbor. After Louise's death in 1926, Frederick sold the Bar
Harbor camp. 114
It is interesting to note that Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt owned houses in most of
the locations popular for country places, seaside cottages, and vacation houses. Their restless
attention to Newport, Bar Harbor, the Adirondacks, and even Palm Beach only serves to
emphasize the esteem and love with which they regarded Hyde Park. It was the only house that
they kept, and changed in relatively minor ways, showing their enduring pleasure with it.
The Vanderbilts' Hyde Park
When Frederick and Louise purchased the Langdon Estate in Hyde Park, the
Poughkeepsie Sunday Courier for May 12, 1895 headlined their story, "Another Millionaire in
Dutchess." Upon their arrival on the banks of the Hudson River, the Frederick Vanderbilts
appropriated a piece of old New York society by purchasing a tract of land which had been part
of the original Dutch colonial patents and which had been developed into a country estate by
113 Cleveland Amory, The Last Resorts (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 272.
114 The Bar Harbor Camp was sold to Atwater Kent in 1927. Charles P. Snell, A Preliminary Report on the
Frederick W. Vanderbilts of Hyde Park, New York. Typescript, April 1, 1954, "Preliminary Report,"
Resource Management Records, Roosevelt-Vanderbilt (ROVA) Archives, 10.
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