Please, do not, under any circumstance, call it a station. It’s a Terminal. Grand Central Terminal was built to house Cornelius Vanderbilt’s railroad network and was envisioned as a gateway to the city. It’s hard to underestimate its grandeur: every day, more than 750,000 people pass through the Grand Central, which is more than the entire…
Category: Vanderbilts
Consuelo Vanderbilt – A Wedding on Fifth Avenue
The most Gilded Wedding of the Gilded Age The main American export of the Gilded Age was not cotton, not tobacco, not flaxseed, rice, tar, or turpentine… it was the American bride. Refined, educated, and groomed for every social situation, exquisitely dressed, beautiful, and fantastically wealthy – the American heiresses, joined in matrimony with the…
Alva Vanderbilt’s Party of the Century
When Alva Vanderbilt built a home, she built a castle, and when she threw a housewarming party, it was the party of the century. Alva Vanderbilt, the wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt (Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandson), had a mission: to carve out her own rightful place in Gilded Age society. At the time the undisputed leader…
Alva Vanderbilt’s “Petit Chateau”
Completed 1882 Demolished in 1926 Architect Richard Morris Hunt 660 5th Ave at W 52nd Street If you found yourself back in the 1880s and were standing at the corner of West 52nd Street and Fifth Ave, you’d be in awe of the massive castle-like white limestone structure modestly referred to as “Petit Chateau.” The…