Reginald Vanderbilt was born in 1880 into the wealthiest family in America, yet when he died at 45, he had gambled away a fortune and drunk himself to an early grave. His final years were marked by a marriage to a teenager the same age as his own daughter, and his choices set the stage for what newspapers later called the trial of the century. His youngest daughter became the center of that custody battle, which was so scandalous that judges cleared the courtroom. She grew up to become Gloria Vanderbilt, and her son became Anderson Cooper, one of the most recognized journalists in America.
As Cooper later said publicly, his mother made clear to him that there was no trust fund. The Vanderbilt fortune was gone. Reggie was the youngest son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, who controlled railroad holdings worth more than the United States Treasury. He grew up in a 70-room mansion on Fifth Avenue and spent summers at the Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island.
While his older brother Alfred was groomed for leadership, Reggie was the spare heir without a defined role. He enrolled at Yale, where classmates voted him most likely to succeed, but dropped out after two years. His father died in 1899 at age 55, leaving Alfred roughly $36. 8 million, while Reggie received $7.
4 million, a substantial sum that nonetheless reflected his father’s disappointment in him. At 19, with money and no responsibilities, Reggie became a regular at the exclusive gambling clubs run by Richard Canfield in Manhattan and Saratoga Springs. Court testimony later revealed he accumulated about $300,000 in debts to Canfield, which he settled for around $130,000. On the night of his 21st birthday, he reportedly lost approximately $70,000 in a single evening.
District Attorney William Travers Jerome eventually pursued Canfield’s operation, and the publicity exposed Reggie’s losses in newspapers. The Vanderbilt name appeared alongside descriptions of enormous wagering, devastating the family’s carefully maintained reputation. There was one area where Reggie earned genuine respect: horses. He served as president of the National Horse Show Association and led the American Hackney Horse Society.
He built Sandy Point Farm on 280 acres in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, with stables featuring 24 stalls and a 15,000-square-foot indoor riding arena. His breeding program produced horses that won repeatedly at Madison Square Garden. In April 1903, Reggie married Kathleen Neilson in Newport. A daughter named Kathleen was born the following year.
The marriage lasted 17 years, ending in divorce in 1920. He then turned his attention to Gloria Morgan, a striking 17-year-old he met at a party when he was 42. His own daughter was the same age. They married quietly on March 6, 1923.
Reggie was 43 and Gloria was 18. She became pregnant almost immediately, and on February 20, 1924, gave birth to a daughter named Gloria Laura Vanderbilt. By then, Reggie’s drinking had badly damaged his liver, and physicians had warned him that he was dying. Prohibition did nothing to slow him.
He drank through the mornings and afternoons until he could no longer stand. Jaundice yellowed his skin, and his abdomen swelled with fluid. Photographs from his final months show a man who looked two decades older than his true age. Reginald Vanderbilt died on September 4, 1925, at Sandy Point Farm.
The cause was cirrhosis. His daughter was 18 months old, and Gloria was 21. His will established trust funds for both daughters, splitting approximately $5 million between them. His widow received income capped at roughly $112,000 per year, along with the Manhattan townhouse and Sandy Point Farm.
Of the $7. 4 million he inherited in 1899, almost nothing liquid remained. His brother Alfred had died aboard the Lusitania in 1915 and left behind an estate larger than what he had received. Nine years after Reggie’s death, little Gloria became the most talked-about child in America.
In 1934, her aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney filed for custody, and the case landed in the New York Supreme Court before Justice John Francis Carew. Reporters packed the chamber daily as accusations filled the front pages. The nurse, Emma Sullivan Kaysik, described Gloria Morgan as neglectful and rarely present. A maid testified through a translator about scenes that forced the judge to clear the chamber, including an alleged relationship with a member of the British royal family.
The accusation of a lesbian affair sent reporters scrambling. Gloria Morgan denied everything. Little Gloria, called to the judge’s chambers away from the press, said she was afraid of her mother and wanted to stay with her aunt. Justice Carew awarded custody to Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and the press dubbed the child “the poor little rich girl.
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The horses at Sandy Point Farm were auctioned off in the months after Reggie’s death. Breeders who had competed against him acquired his bloodlines, and the breeding program he had spent 20 years developing was scattered. The land was later divided and sold. The family’s decline followed a broader pattern that began with the Commodore himself, who built a fortune worth approximately $100 million by the time he died in 1877.
His descendants spent it within four generations. In 1973, 120 descendants of the Commodore gathered for a family reunion. Reporters noted that not one among them was a millionaire. By 1947, every Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue had been demolished.
The Breakers survived as a museum. During his lifetime, Reggie’s brother Alfred organized the horse barn at Sagamore Farm in Maryland and was known for his equestrian interests. Their father, Cornelius, had trusted Alfred and worried about Reggie, and history validated those concerns. One brother died at the Lusitania giving his life jacket to a mother and child.
The other poured another drink. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney built the Whitney Museum of American Art, which opened in 1931. She died in 1942, leaving an institution that still shapes American culture. The Vanderbilt mansions in Newport now welcome hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.
The Preservation Society of Newport County began acquiring them in 1945 as families could no longer afford the upkeep. Biltmore, George Washington Vanderbilt’s 250-room estate in North Carolina, remains privately owned and attracts over a million visitors annually, operated by his descendants through commercial ventures. Reginald Vanderbilt left behind two daughters, two wives, and a cautionary tale. He created nothing and consumed everything.
His youngest daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt, worked as an actress, painter, and writer, building her own fortune through effort rather than inheritance. Her son Anderson Cooper said publicly that she made clear to him that there was no trust fund. The Vanderbilt wealth exists only as history.