Vanderbilt Houses: NYC
When Cornelius Vanderbilt and his wife Alice demolished three brownstones on Fifth Avenue in New York City in the 1870s, the mansion they built on the land became the largest single-family home in the city’s history.
As the years went on, Cornelius purchased even more brownstones to demolish and make way for additions to his property, stating that his goal was to rival the nearby Plaza Hotel. Alice finally sold the mansion—by all accounts a chilly place—to a developer in 1927. That developer wasted no time in demolishing the mansion to make way for new buildings (Bergdorf Goodman now stands at the original mansion’s address).
You can still find remnants of the mansion throughout New York City: its main gates are in Central Park, two of its six sculptural reliefs are still installed in the Sherry-Netherland Hotel and its entrance hall fireplace (along with various pieces of artwork) is on display at Metropolitan Museum of Art.
