When Alice Clay Vanderbilt married into the Vanderbilt dynasty in 1867, she joined America’s most powerful family at the peak of its Gilded Age glory. Over the following decades, she witnessed the Commodore’s vast fortune swell and then slowly crumble, watching from the sidelines as her descendants squandered an empire that once seemed limitless. Alice was born in Cincinnati in 1845, the daughter of a lawyer and the granddaughter of a former mayor of New Haven. After her father died when she was nine, her mother remarried and the family moved to New York City.
There, while teaching Sunday school at St. Bartholomew’s Church, she met Cornelius Vanderbilt II, heir to a railroad fortune built by his grandfather, the Commodore. They married in February 1867, and Alice stepped into a world of staggering wealth. When the Commodore died in 1877, he left over $100 million, the vast majority of it to Alice’s father-in-law, William Henry Vanderbilt, who doubled the inheritance before his own death in 1885.
Alice and Cornelius then inherited a fortune equivalent to billions in today’s terms. The couple had seven children, though the family was marked by tragedy. Their oldest daughter died young, and their son William, a Yale student, died of typhoid in 1892. Their son Cornelius III was disinherited after marrying against his parents’ wishes.
Two other sons, Alfred and Reginald, became the main heirs to the family fortune. In 1883, Alice stunned New York society at a masquerade ball hosted by her ambitious sister-in-law, Alva. Her gown, known as the Electric Light Dress, was made of white satin wired to carry an electrical current and studded with glass beads arranged like lightning bolts. It literally glowed and dominated press coverage, cementing Alice’s reputation as quietly audacious.
Alice and Cornelius built the largest private residence in New York, the Cornelius Vanderbilt II mansion at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, and later added The Breakers, a 70-room summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. Cornelius suffered a debilitating stroke in 1896 and died three years later, leaving Alice a widow with a fortune of nearly $73 million in his estate. She received a $7 million trust and a weekly income of $5,000. After her husband’s death, Alice largely withdrew from high society.
She watched with growing despair as her descendants spent lavishly on mansions and extravagant lifestyles, eroding the family fortune. She remained active in philanthropy, supporting the YMCA, the Red Cross, and Newport Hospital, and funding Vanderbilt Hall at Yale in memory of her son. She also donated the ornate gates still standing at Central Park’s Conservatory Garden entrance. Even in her later years, Alice remained outspoken.
In the early 1920s, she left the St. Bartholomew’s congregation after a minister preached a sermon promoting a conspiracy theory about the Catholic Church seeking to take over the United Kingdom. Her family continued to face hardship. Her son Reginald, who struggled with alcoholism, died in 1925 at age 45.
His death led to a long-awaited reconciliation between Alice and her estranged son Cornelius III, from whom she had not spoken for 30 years. Reginald left behind a daughter, Gloria, who later became a fashion designer and the mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. Alice moved into a townhouse on Fifth Avenue in 1923, making way for the demolition of the grand mansion she had built with her husband. She died on April 24, 1934, at age 88, leaving behind over $10 million.
Unlike many of her descendants, she had lived within her means and died having spent less than she earned. She was buried in the Vanderbilt family mausoleum on Staten Island. Alva Vanderbilt, Alice’s sister-in-law, played an equally influential role in the dynasty’s story. Born Alva Erskine Smith in Alabama in 1853, she married William Kissam Vanderbilt in 1875.
Although the Vanderbilts were among the wealthiest families in America, New York’s old-money elite still shunned them as nouveau riche. Alva set out to change that. She commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to build a lavish French Renaissance chateau on Fifth Avenue and threw a masquerade ball in 1882 with 1,000 guests. She deliberately did not invite Caroline Astor, the gatekeeper of New York high society, forcing Astor to call on her to secure an invitation for her daughter.
The ploy worked, and the Vanderbilts were finally accepted into the upper echelons of society. But the acceptance came at a steep price. Alva’s extravagant spending set a standard that other family members rushed to match, and soon the Vanderbilts were pouring hundreds of millions into mansions and summer cottages. By the 1910s, no Vanderbilt ranked among the richest Americans.
By the 1970s, it is believed that few of nearly 600 living descendants were millionaires. Alva’s marriage to William deteriorated due to his long-running infidelity. She filed for divorce in 1895 and married Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont less than a year later. After his death in 1908, she became a leading figure in the women’s suffrage movement, using her wealth to fund organizations and support labor strikes in New York.
Alva died in Paris in January 1933. Her body was returned to New York, and leading suffragists carried her coffin down Fifth Avenue. Her daughter, Consuelo Vanderbilt, was born in New York City in 1877. Raised under her mother’s strict and controlling hand, she was made to wear a steel rod along her back for posture and was often isolated from social life.
By her late teens, her mother had decided she would marry into the British aristocracy. When the family raised the idea of a marriage to Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, Consuelo resisted. She had secretly become engaged to Winthrop Rutherfurd, a New York socialite significantly older than her. But her mother claimed her health was deteriorating because of Consuelo’s refusal, and the emotional blackmail worked.
Consuelo agreed to the marriage. The wedding took place in November 1895. Consuelo was just 18. Accounts from the time describe her weeping under her veil at the altar.
The Duke received approximately $2. 5 million in Vanderbilt railway stock as part of the arrangement, a sum equivalent to nearly $100 million today. The marriage was unhappy from the start. Both parties had abandoned other relationships, and they quickly became involved with other people.
They officially separated around 1906 and divorced in 1921. The union produced two sons, one of whom became the 10th Duke of Marlborough. During World War I, Consuelo helped found the American Women’s War Relief Fund alongside Lou Hoover and Lady Randolph Churchill. The organization financed knitting workshops and equipped a military hospital that treated thousands of wounded soldiers.
In 1921, shortly after her divorce, she married Jacques Balsan, a pioneer of aviation who had worked with the Wright brothers. She later described her time with him as “gold. ” They lived primarily in Paris and barely escaped the city ahead of the Nazi advance in 1940, fleeing to Spain, then Portugal, and eventually the United States. In her later years she lived in Florida and New York.
In 1946, Winston Churchill stayed at her Florida home, Casa Alva, on his way to deliver his famous “Iron Curtain” speech. Consuelo published her autobiography, “The Glitter and the Gold,” in 1953. Jacques died in 1956, and Consuelo died in 1964 on Long Island. She was buried at St.
Martin’s Church near Blenheim Palace, beside her son Ivor. Cornelia Vanderbilt, another member of the family, led one of the most unconventional lives of them all. She was born in 1900 on the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, the only child of George Washington Vanderbilt II. The estate, built in the style of a French Renaissance chateau, was the largest privately owned home in the United States, with approximately 250 rooms and tens of thousands of acres.
Cornelia narrowly missed the Titanic disaster. In 1912, her father decided to book the family on an earlier ship home from England because of a coal strike that threatened to delay transatlantic crossings. The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage. Her father died in 1914, leaving a $50 million estate, including Biltmore.
Cornelia inherited millions and became one of the wealthiest women in the world. She married John Amherst Cecil, a descendant of an English aristocratic family, in 1924. The wedding was held at Biltmore, and the couple had two sons. By the early 1930s, she found life at Biltmore stifling.
In 1932, she left suddenly for New York to attend art school, and soon after settled in Paris. She divorced Cecil in 1934 but never returned to America, not even for her mother’s funeral. She adopted the name Nivcha, dyed her hair pink, and later blue, reflecting her belief in numerology and color auras. During the war, her sons narrowly escaped death when they were bumped from a flight that was later shot down by the Nazis.
Among those killed was actor Leslie Howard. Cornelia married twice more, including a union with a man 26 years younger than her at age 72. She died in 1976 in Oxfordshire, and her ashes were later buried in Scotland alongside her third husband. After her death, her sons turned Biltmore into a historic house museum, and it remains a major tourist attraction today.
Gloria Vanderbilt was perhaps the most famous of the dynasty’s later women. Born in 1924, she was the daughter of Reginald Vanderbilt, who died of cirrhosis of the liver when she was 18 months old. Reginald left most of his wealth to Gloria in trust, but the fortune sparked a bitter legal battle between her mother and her aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. In 1934, Gertrude sued for custody of Gloria, and the case became known as the trial of the century.
The court heard salacious testimony about Gloria’s mother, including allegations of a lesbian relationship and lavish spending. Gloria, just 10 years old, testified in a cleared courtroom. The court granted custody to Gertrude, ruling that Gloria’s mother had been negligent. The relationship between Gloria and her mother never fully healed.
In 1946, Gloria stopped paying her mother’s allowance and said she would donate the money to charity instead. Gloria went on to a career in the arts, acting in Broadway productions and television shows. She married four times, including to conductor Leopold Stokowski and director Sidney Lumet, and had affairs with figures such as Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, and Howard Hughes. She found lasting fame in the 1970s with a successful line of jeans bearing her name, which expanded into clothing, accessories, and fragrances.
She also published several memoirs and novels. Her later life was quieter, devoted to writing, art, and her family. Gloria died on June 17, 2019, at age 95.
She was buried in the Vanderbilt family crypt on Staten Island, and her estate went to her son, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.