| Birth: | Nov. 26, 1845
Cincinnati
Hamilton County
Ohio, USA | | Death: | Apr. 22, 1934
Manhattan
New York County
New York, USA | 
Alice Claypoole Gwynne Vanderbilt was a prominent socialite and for more than sixty years the reining dowager matron of the Vanderbilt clan. Daughter of Abraham Gwynne, a lawyer, and Rachel Flagg. Widow of Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843 – 1899), chairman of the board of the Grand Central Depot which included over 50 different railroad lines. Proud, small and religious; she met her equally pious husband while teaching Sunday school at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church. Who, along with her husband's sisters Emily Vanderbilt Sloane White and Florence Vanderbilt Twombly, came to exercise complete dominance over "Old Guard" New York and Newport Society. Insisting, as did her husband, on such architectural palaces that were equal to the Vanderbilt's status as wealthiest family in America, she hired society architects Richard Morris Hunt and George B. Post to carry out large scale enhancements to the family's current dowdy townhouse at No. 1 West 57th Street and Fifth Avenue. When it was complete is was one of the grandest home erected in New York, with two different entrance; one for the family and one to be used during formal occasions, occupying a full city block, making it the largest private residence ever built in New York. She expected the same for her home in Newport, Rhode Island; calling Hunt in again to design what would become the largest home in Rhode Island - A noble 16th century seaside palace; the home itself occupying one full acre of the twelve-acre site. Filling the marble halls and golds rooms of her two mansions with the finest furniture that money could buy, she soon became dubbed 'Alice of The Breakers'. Attiring her footmen in maroon livery, the color of the House of Vanderbilt, she was followed everywhere by two burly guards. She demanded that instead of her going to the fashion houses in Paris, they come to her and she was regularly visited by the latest Parisian fashion designers. Rarely going out in public during midday; she would order her guards to seize and smash to the ground any camera that took her picture while she was outside. Nursing her paralyzed husband in his final months, she inherited millions of cash dollars on his early death, the interest on which alone could support her present lifestyle. Never attiring herself in anything lighter than dark purple from that day forward, she would remain in mourning for more thirty years. With massive towers of metal and glass rising on all sides of her at No. 1 West 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, she clung to her block-long fortress. With taxes on the home rising to $130,000 ($1.6 million today), and taxes on the 'Breakers' rising to $85,000 ($1 million today), combined almost her entire annual income, she was forced to sell the New York home. Purchasing for eight-hundred thousand dollars the former George Gould townhouse, dying there at the eighty-eight, leaving for her children an estate which included more than $10 million in cash, her townhouse, the 'Breakers', the Gwynne Building, the remainder of a Vanderbilt trust and a photograph of herself.
Family links:
Parents:
Abraham E Gwynne (____ - 1855)
Spouse:
Cornelius Vanderbilt (1843 - 1899)
Children:
William Henry Vanderbilt (1870 - 1892)*
*Calculated relationship
| | | Burial:
Moravian Cemetery
New Dorp
Richmond County
New York, USA
Plot: Vanderbilt Family Plot |
Created by: Tyler Hughes
Record added: Jul 08, 2012
Find A Grave Memorial# 93294969 |
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