Two hundred years after his ancestor, Dutch farmer Jan Aertson immigrated to New York City, Cornelius "The Commodore" Vanderbilt kickstarted the iconic family's extensive, and exorbitant, property portfolio in the 1830s. The sprawling real estate empire of grand mansions would reach its peak some 50 years later.
After the Commodore's steamship and railroad businesses made him the richest person in the world, a mansion on Staten Island was the first of a long list of Vanderbilt homes built across the country. Later constructions also included the sweeping Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, which remains today the largest privately owned house in the United States, and close to an incredible 30 residences across New York.
© New York Public LibraryThe Vanderbilts' Staten Island roots
The first notable residence the Vanderbilt family built was a mansion for the Commodore on Staten Island, built in 1839 between Stapleton and Tompkinsville, on the northeast corner of his father's farm. Though its architect is unknown, the 40-foot-tall residence cost $27,000 (approximately just shy of a million dollars today), and was known for its modified Gothic style featuring six fluted columns at the entrance as well as a Grecian portico.
However, the Commodore and his wife Sophia Johnson only lived in it for six years; the Vanderbilts' railroad business was growing so fast that they needed to move to New York City. The home, badly damaged in an 1882 fire, was eventually demolished, and today in its place is a slew of low-rise buildings housing a Chinese restaurant and a dental office.
Many of the Commodore's descendants who went on to build the famed Vanderbilt Row mansions on Fifth Avenue were also raised in Staten Island, several of them at William Henry Vanderbilt and his wife Maria Kissam's 24-room farmhouse in New Dorp. Referred to as "The White House," the property was built circa 1850.
© New York Public LibrarySold to the U.S. government in 1919, it was demolished in 1938; the grounds are now part of former Air Coast Defense Station Miller Field, a Gateway National Recreation Area operated by the National Park Service.
The next stop for the Vanderbilts was 10 Washington Place, where the Commodore built a four-story red brick house with trimmed brownstone, at a cost of around $64,500. Thirteen years after the Commodore's 1877 death, the home sold for approximately $200,000. The structure was subsequently demolished and converted into a six-story building that is today occupied by New York University.
Moving up to Fifth Avenue
The Vanderbilt family property portfolio peaked during the Gilded Age, after multiple Vanderbilt generations built and purchased, almost at once, nearly a dozen mansions — more akin to palaces — on New York City's famed Fifth Avenue. Such was the abundance of homes, and their opulence, that a portion of the famed street, now typically referred to as Millionaire's Row, was coined Vanderbilt Row for a time.
This multi-generational real estate odyssey perfectly mirrors the evolution of New York City, where the northern boundary was once just Wall Street and the land above it largely undeveloped pastures and farms.
© Getty ImagesAs architect and historian Gary Lawrence, who runs the blogs Mansions of the Gilded Age as well as The Gilded Age Society, explains, as New York City grew, both old money and new money families wanted to "live in pleasant, quiet neighborhoods."
They therefore built brand new homes further uptown (albeit still Lower Manhattan), near Lafayette Street and Astor Place.
A majority of the mansions have been replaced by office towers; the few that still stand have been altered for commercial use - like George Washington Vanderbilt's townhouse that now houses a Skims store
"Then as those areas became developed and commercial buildings rose, the wealthy moved again, to the area either fronting Washington Square Park or nearby. The progression continued up the lower streets of Fifth Avenue," Lawrence adds.
Why NYC ruthlessly tore down its grandest Gilded Age palaces
The Vanderbilt family's homes on Fifth Avenue are arguably among the properties they're best known for, despite most of these stunning New York City mansions being torn down less than five decades after their construction.
© Getty ImagesGrand as these homes were, the houses fell both out of use and vogue. Ironically, they were razed for almost the same reasons their inhabitants landed on Fifth Avenue in the first place: commercialization.
"Earlier Vanderbilt mansions were destroyed in the 1920s, when most were embracing the rise of the skyscrapers, newness and the beauty of the Art Deco age," says Lawrence. "Sadly, by the 1960s, glass fronted bland buildings would replace the architectural glories of the Gilded Age."
New York City, always the world of new is better, saw these old mansions as dated and representing a fussy life of rigid formality — unlike the 1920s where freedom and newness was all the vogue
"With income taxes and real estate taxes increasing," he adds, "the land was very much sought after by developers who offered high prices for the creation of very chic 'mansions in the sky:' apartment buildings."
It's a story with societal implications that still resonate today: home buyers seeking out privacy and space in underdeveloped areas, only for commercial developments to chase people further out like a game of Pac-Man. Empty nesters, meanwhile, struggle to justify keeping a large home when real estate and income taxes are only becoming more and more expensive.
© HELLO! MagazineThe price of progress?
As historic and preservation-worthy as Gilded Age homes may appear, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission wasn't created until 1965, several years after most Vanderbilt mansions were demolished.
The land was very much sought after by developers who offered high prices for the creation of very chic 'mansions in the sky': apartment buildings
In Lawrence's opinion, "It seems that New York City, always the world of new is better, and [with] the real estate boom of the Roaring Twenties, saw these old mansions as dated and representing a fussy life of rigid formality — unlike the 1920s where freedom and newness was all the vogue."
Also a factor? "The still-today world of New York City where the land value is so high and the opportunity to make lots of money is the primary goal."
