I am very fascinated with the Vanderbilt family myself and have been working on a Vanderbilt Genealogy myself. There are a few genealogies written, but I don’t think that they do justice to the family. Does anyone know if anyone else is working on the Descendants of the ” Commodore”
If so, I sure would love to share information.

Do you happen to recall coming across that name in your research at all? I am going to keep digging and hope to get more out of my family but wanted to check wth you as well.

Thanks for the wonderful work you have done. This site is great!!

Thank you,
Rachelle

I worked with Jean Rand as she wrote her book, but at that time I had beleived Cornelius’s father was Cornelius Aerts Vanderbilt. At any rate I think the Commodore is my 3rd cousin, 3 or 4 times removed.

I’m still looking!

-660 Fifth Avenue, built by William K. and Alva Vanderbilt. (This house changed American architecture)

-1 West 57th Street, built by Cornelius II and Alice Vanderbilt. After a large renovation and expansion, this house became the largest private home in NYC history.

-Marble House, built by William K. and Alva Vanderbilt. Considered architect Richard Morris Hunt’s masterpiece.

-Woodlea, built by Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard.

-Elm Court, built by Emily Vanderbilt and WD Sloane. After many renovations, it has become the largest shigle-style house in America with 96 rooms.

-Eagle’s Nest, built by William K Vanderbilt II. Sprawling Mediterreanean style estate on Long Island.

-Beacon Towers, built by Alva Vanderbilt (now) Belmont. Built by Hunt and Hunt, the sons of her great friend and architect, Richard Morris Hunt.

-477 Madison Avenue, built by Alva Vanderbilt (now) Belmont. Alva gave up 660 in her divorce with William K and then married Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, a good family friend. They planned and started building this house together, but OHPB died before it was completed. Alva finished it as a tribute (if not a shrine) to her husband.

Just a few more for the list.

It was originally built by William Henry Vanderbilt, son of the Commodore. It was a triple house with the largest section for himself, and two smaller (but still grand) houses for two of his daughters, Margaret Vanderbilt Shepard, located at 2 West 52nd Street, and Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, located at 642 Fifth Avenue. After WHV died, he left it to his wife and youngest son, still living at home, and after Maria Kissam Vanderbilt died, it was George Vanderbilt’s alone. Later, Margaret sold her half, or third, to her sister Emily, who combined them into a house roughly the size of what her father’s, or brother’s now, was. George then leased the house to Henry Clay Frick to help subdue the debts incurred with the building of his famous Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. HCF lived there until 1914 when GWV died and the house reverted to the oldest son of his oldest brother. That was Cornelius Vanderbilt III. His father, Cornelius II (died in 1899) had disinherited “Neily” for marrying a woman named Grace Wilson. Her family had a reputation as being “fast” and gold diggers. It was luck that Neily should then years later, inherit the family mansion. (During the tenure of Grace and Neily, Emily Sloane, now White, sold her half of the house, which was demolished.) Grace Vanderbilt, upon seeing the interior for the first time, called it “the black hole of Calcutta” and called in prominent architect Horace Trumbauer to do a cellar-to-attic renovation. She reigned over society for many years from 640, until escalating property taxes and encroaching commercialization forced her to sell the manse. She moved to the William Starr Miller house further up Fifth Avenue in the early 1950s and the house was replaced with a banal, ordinary skyscraper.