Weekend, October 23-24, 2021 – THE MOST RICH HAD THE MOST EXTRAVAGENT HOMES…ALMOST ALL GONE

By admin

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Saturday	October 23, 2021	8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Sunday	October 24, 2021	8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
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Sunday	October 31, 2021	8:00 AM to 4:00 PM

FROM THE ARCHIVES
WEEKEND, OCTOBER 23-24, 2021
THE  502nd EDITION

THE GILDED AGE

5TH AVENUE

MANSIONS OF

MILLIONAIRE’S ROW

from UNTAPPED NEW YORK

CORNELIUS VANDERBILT MANSION

The Cornelius Vanderbilt II Mansion on 57th Street and 5th Avenue, now demolished. Photo from Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection

New York City’s Fifth Avenue in Manhattan has been associated with glamour and wealth since the 1800s. However, when this now-iconic street was first laid out, it was given a rather humdrum name, Middle Road. The undeveloped parcel of land Middle Road cut through, which was sold in 1785 to raise municipal funds for the newly established nation, would become the epicenter of New York City’s high society. As the 18th-century turned into the 19th-century and the Gilded Age began, the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan renamed Middle Road Fifth Avenue. Development of the city moved northward, led by millionaires who built palatial homes on the largely empty swaths of land. The string of fabulous Gilded Age 5th Avenue mansions that stretched from 59th to 78th Street was dubbed the “Gold Coast,” and “Millionaire’s Row.” While many of the grandiose 5th Avenue mansions of New York City’s 19th and early 20th-century millionaires have been lost to time, there are some that remain intact today, serving as homes for non-profits, museums, and cultural organizations.

WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT MANSION

Photo from Library of Congress

Richard Morris Hunt, the architect commissioned to design a home for William K. Vanderbilt and his ambitious wife Alva, “knew his new young clients very well,” writes Arthur T. Vanderbilt II in Fortune’s Children, “and he understood the function of architecture as a reflection of ambition. He sensed that Alva wasn’t interested in another home. She wanted a weapon: a house she could use as a battering ram to crash through the gates of society.” Alva’s home needed to stand out against all the other 5th Avenue mansions. Alva crashed through the gates of society in the spring of 1883 with her “Fancy Dress Ball.” Until that groundbreaking ball, Alva, part of the new money rich, was not welcomed into the established New York City social scene ruled by Mrs. Astor.

Besting Mrs. Astor’s 400, Alva invited 1,200 of New York’s finest to her ball. Mrs. Astor was conspicuously left off the guest list, until she came calling at Alva’s door, symbolically bowing to the new order as she sought an invitation for her and her daughter. Inside Alva’s home, guests were greeted in a hall built of stone quarried from Caen, France. The interiors were decorated from trips to Europe, with items from both antique shops and from “pillaging the ancient homes of impoverished nobility.” The Vanderbilts affectionately referred to their mansion as the Petit Chateau. Sadly, the mansion was demolished in 1926 after being sold to a real estate developer and in its stead rose 666 Fifth Avenue, an office tower.

WILLIAM A. CLARK MANSON

Image via Library of Congress

“Copper King” William A. Clark’s mansion at 960 Fifth Avenue was dubbed “Clark’s Folly.” The hulking home cost $6 million to build at the time, a sum that roughly equals $150 million dollars in modern times according to the Museum of the City of New York. Clark’s mansion, which took fourteen years to build, consisted of “121 rooms, 31 baths, four art galleries, a swimming pool, concealed garage, and underground rail line to bring in heating coal was completed in 1911.”

To facilitate the construction of the extravagant home, Clark bought a quarry in New Hampshire where he sourced stone and transported it to New York via a railroad he built specifically for that purpose. He also acquired a bronze foundry to make all of the metal fittings. Marble was imported from Italy, oak brought in from the Sherwood Forrest of England, and pieces of a French Chateau shipped over from France. After all of the work on the mansion was complete, Clark had a mere fourteen years to enjoy it before he passed away in 1925. The home became a white elephant. It eventually sold in 1927 for less than $3 million dollars and was promptly demolished, making it one of the most short-lived buildings in New York City. The mansion was replaced by a 12-story luxury condo building designed by Rosario Candela.

The Vanderbilt Triple Palace: 640 and 660 Fifth Avenue and 2 West 52nd Street

Image from Public Domain from the A. D. White Architectural Photographs Collection, Cornell University Library

Two granddaughters of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt were each given their own 5th Avenue mansions. In 1882, the girls’ father, William Henry Vanderbilt, bought an entire block between 51st and 52nd Street where he built the “Triple Palaces,” three near-identical brownstone homes for himself and his wife along with their two daughters, Emily and Margaret. When hosting large events, the separate drawing rooms could be converted into one large ballroom!

The “palaces” caught the eye of another wealthy New Yorker, Henry Clay Frick. Frick is reported to have said, “That is all I shall ever want” on a drive past the Triple Palaces with his friend Andrew Mellon. In 1905, Frick would get the chance to have his own palace when he rented one out on a 10-year lease while George Vanderbilt was preoccupied with building the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. He would have bought the house if William H. Vanderbilt’s will had not barred George from selling the home and art outside of the family. Later, via a loophole, the property and artwork were able to be sold by Vanderbilt’s grandson to the Astors, who in turn sold the holdings in the 1940s. Today, skyscrapers stand in place of the palaces and where once there were ballrooms and drawing rooms, there are now retailers like H&M, Godiva, and Juicy Couture.

FOR THE VANDERBILT KIDS

Photo by Albert Levy in public domain from Wikimedia Commons

William Henry Vanderbilt’s other two daughters, Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly and Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb, also got their own mansions on Fifth Avenue. In fact, there were so many Vanderbilt mansions built along Fifth Avenue, that a stretch of the street became known as “Vanderbilt Row.” Florence and Eliza’s townhouses were designed by architect John B. Snook in 1883. The two neighboring homes were very different than their sisters’ “Triple Palaces.” Florence and Eliza’s mansions boasted rusticated stonework, turrets, bow windows, and a mixture of domes and galbes that resulted in busy rooflines.

Florence lived at 684 Fifth Avenue until 1926 when she upgraded to a new mansion further north along Central Park. The Webbs sold 680 to John D. Rockefeller in 1913. Both were demolished for a skyscraper that has The Gap as its anchor tenant.

BOSTWICK MANSION

Photo from New York Public Library

As a founding partner and treasurer of Standard Oil, Jabez A. Bostwick was one of the many men who made it big in the oil business. Bostwick, like most wealthy men of his time, took his fortune and his family to Fifth Avenue where he built a 10-room French Second Empire mansion in 1876 on the corner of 61st Street. When his daughter Nellie married, he extended the mansion to 801 and 802 Fifth Avenue.

After Jabez’s death and other family tragedies befell the Bostwicks, his wife Helen remained in the home until she too passed away in 1920. Family friend Mrs. Marcellus Hartley Dodge, a daughter of William Rockefeller purchased the Helen Bostwick home in 1922 and left it seemingly abandoned until 1977. In 1979, the homes were demolished to make way for a 33-story luxury apartment building.

THE SECOND MRS. ASTOR’S HOME

Photo from Library of Congress, George Grantham Bain Collection.

When Caroline Astor’s nephew William Astor knocked down his own townhouse to build the original Waldorf Hotel, right next door to her own mansion, she up and left. In 1894, Caroline and her son headed uptown to a more fashionable spot on 65th Street and Fifth Avenue. “Starchitect” Richard Morris Hunt, the same man who designed other Gilded Age 5th Avenue mansions like William K. and Alva Vanderbilt’s Petit Chateau, was hired to design Caroline’s new abode. While the exterior appeared to be that of one large mansion, the interior was actually split into two separate living spaces, one for Caroline, and one for her son John Jacob Astor. The two residences were connected by a ballroom that could hold 1,200 guests (the same amount of guests that Alva Vanderbilt had invited to her fancy dress ball).

After Caroline’s death, John Jacob Astor took over his mother’s portion of the mansion and made some major renovations. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy the new space. After honeymooning in Europe with his new second wife, he booked a return trip aboard the doomed RMS Titanic. John did not survive the tragedy. While his new wife and her maid did make it safely back to New York City, they were forced to give up the mansion, as dictated by Astor’s will. It passed to Astor’s son from his first marriage, William Vincent Astor. Preferring his estate out on Long Island, William sold the 65th Street property to developers and auctioned off the interiors. Today the Temple Emanu-El stands in its place.

FRICK MANSION

Magnolias in bloom, The Frick Collection, Fifth Avenue

Today, we know the Henry Clay Frick House as the Frick Collection, a repository of old masters (and a hidden underground bowling alley!). Frick began to amass his art collection while staying at one of the Vanderbilt Triple Palaces. In 1912, he commissioned Thomas Hastings, of the firm Carrère and Hastings, to build his own mansion on 5th Avenue and 7oth Street. The illustrious firm of Carrère and Hastings designed the New York Public Library at Bryant Park.

Fricks instructed Hastings to build him “a small house with plenty of light and air,” one that would be “simple, in good taste, and not ostentatious.” Despite what Frick may have said, he ended up with a palatial, 61-room home embellished with ancient symbolism and decorated inside with Rococo and Renaissance furniture and decorative arts, and of course, his collection of old masters. The Frick mansion recently had a starring role in the HBO Max television show The Undoing. While the mansion is under renovation, the priceless works of art have been moved for the first time in nearly 80 years, into the Met Breuer.

WEEKEND PHOTO
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FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY

This new Street Seat in Long Island City highlights an ancient rock formation on 12th Street. The VOREA Group

A Long Island City street with an unusual, ancient impediment has been transformed from a derelict strip of concrete into a vibrant pedestrian plaza.

The city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) has partnered with developer the VOREA Group to overhaul a stretch of 12th Street between 44th Avenue and 43rd Road, where through traffic was previously prohibited by a glacial rock formation. The partnership came to be through the Street Seats program, a citywide effort that converts underused streets into public spaces.

The geological quirk left the street, which originally lacked pedestrian sidewalks, in a sort of limbo; it couldn’t easily be accessed by the public, so was previously used as employee parking for a local company. Enter VOREA, which owns properties along the street, and who applied to work with the city to turn the block into a pedestrian oasis in a largely industrial swath of the Queens neighborhood. Now, instead of functioning as an obstacle, the rock formation and its history serves as a focal point.

“That was the vision we had with the developer, to highlight that as a unique element within the space,” says Samantha Dolgoff, the director of strategic initiatives with DOT. “We didn’t want the rock to just be there. We wanted it be more prominent in the space.”

Funding Provided by:
Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation Public Purpose Funds
Council Member Ben Kallos City Council Discretionary Funds thru DYCD
Text by Judith Berdy

UNTAPPED NEW YORK

Edited by Deborah Dorff
ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT RIHS. 2020 (C)
 PHOTOS IN THIS ISSUE (C) JUDITH BERDY RIHS

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