The Vanderbilt era

This volume "examines the lives of New York's 'acceptable' families, the privileged wealthy, during the period 1880-1920. The author uses his close connections to their descendants and other research to tell lively anecdotal histories of the business-dominated, pseudo-aristocracy in democratic America." The Vanderbilt family was highly prominent during the 1800s due to the family patriarch Cornelius Vanderbilt, who created railroad and shipping empires. His descendants went on to build great Fifth Avenue mansions, Newport, Rhode Island summer cottages, the famous Biltmore House and various other exclusive homes. The family members were the leaders of the high society scene and the Gilded Age, until the early 1900s, when the ten great Fifth Avenue mansions were torn down and fellow Vanderbilt homes were sold as museums and the like. This work consists of group portraits among its illustrations of three generations of the Vanderbilt family's conspicuous outward appearances and architectural indulgences.