Vanderbilt New York

Fifth Avenue in the fifties used to be Vanderbilt country, where William Henry Vanderbilt, William Kissam Vanderbilt, and Cornelius Vanderbilt II lived in palatial houses that were all torn down in the 1920s. This tour will try to reimagine the old Vanderbilt compound, look for traces of it that may still exist, discuss the family’s impact on the development of New York City, look at the hows and whys of the 1920s redevelopment of Fifth Avenue that swept away the Vanderbilt mansions, and look at some existing Vanderbilt houses in the east sixties.