National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

The Gilded Age and Country Places
Herter Brothers, then at the height of their career. These interiors documented by a bill of sale
from 1878 and four interior photographs reveal the most up-to-date aesthetic taste. 139
The Vanderbilts took off on their building spree on December 8, 1879 when William
Henry, and his two eldest sons Cornelius, and William K. all filed building plans for their New
York City houses on the same day. 140 The three houses, William Henry's Triple Palace for
himself and daughters Margaret Shepard and Emily Sloane at 640 Fifth Avenue, Cornelius'
house at 1 West 57th Street, and William K.'s chateau at 660 Fifth Avenue were designed by
different architects, in different styles.
John Snook in collaboration with Herter Brothers were the architects of 640 Fifth
Avenue. It was built of typical New York brownstone, largely because William Henry was too
impatient to endure the additional building time that using limestone would have added to the
job. Snook had a long association with the Vanderbilts, most notably for the design of the
original Grand Central Station. The interiors of William Henry's portion of the mansion,
however, were truly magnificent. William Baumgarten, the manager of Herter Brothers, who
decorated the house, said the following:
Mr. Vanderbilt was the most liberal customer [Herter Brothers] ever had. We have rarely
had a customer who took such personal interest in the work during its progress. All the
designs were submitted to him from the first stone to the last piece of decoration or
furniture. Mr. Vanderbilt was at our warerooms or at our shops almost every day for a year.
He spent hours in the designing rooms, and often looked on while the workmen were busy
in the shops, and gave them money and encouragement in their work. 141
William Henry's rapt attention could scarcely have escaped the notice of his children.
The house was also widely noticed by the public and the New York press. 142 The interiors were
extraordinary, executed in a variety of progressive styles including Japanese, Renaissance, Louis
XIV, Aesthetic, Moorish, and Pompeian. William Henry opened his art gallery to the public one
day every week.
It was the social aspirations of William Henry's children, fueled by their desire to build
that drove their construction frenzy of the 1880s and 1890s. William K. and Alva's
Gothic/Renaissance chateau at 660 Fifth Avenue was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and
completed in 1883. Alva's relentless desire to be accepted into New York Society culminated in
a ball given in March of 1883, where she forced Mrs. Astor, the undisputed leader of society to
call on her, in order that her daughter could dance a quadrille at the ball. Hunt's mansion, based
on the Chateau de Blois was the most dazzling design of all of the Vanderbilt New York houses.
Revolutionary may be the best adjective to describe the house in which the ball was held.
Here on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street, stood an exception
to the brownstone fronts in which our millionaires were accustomed to conceal their rise in
the world - a glistening chateau of Caen stone which satisfied so superbly the needs of a
139
Collection of Biltmore.
140
Plans for 660 Fifth, 640 Fifth, and 1 West 57 were all filed the same day. The New York Times,
December 9, 1879. Wilson, et al, American Renaissance, 118. Each one of them had received a legacy from
the death of the Commodore.
141
Quoted in James Maher, The Twilight of Splendor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), xvi-ii
from The New York Herald, December 11, 1885.
142
William Henry Vanderbilt also commissioned a vanity publication about the house: Edward Strahan,
Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection (Boston, New York, and Philadelphia: George Barrie, 1883-4).
29