Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

“In writing this book, my coauthor, Katherine Howe, and I wanted to explore how some of the Vanderbilts—people with personalities and weaknesses and foibles, who found themselves living the ultimate American myth—actually felt as their lives were unfolding.”

Here Cooper lays out the goal of the book. It is not an all-encompassing history of the family. Aside from the basic story of the Commodore’s first venture in a ferry service, it does not even get into the details of the Vanderbilts’ business dealings that netted them so much wealth. Instead, the goal is to look at several members of the famous family as individuals, delving into their personal lives to present a more holistic picture of each, rather than the stock figures of the tabloids. As much as possible, the authors draw upon memoirs or other primary sources of information to include these individuals’ own perspectives and feelings at the time the events took place.

“The sheer size of The Breakers is hard to contemplate: Seventy rooms comprising square footage better measured in acreage than in feet—nearly three times as big as the White House. The morning room walls are paneled in platinum. The first floor alone sprawls with room upon room built on a scale more suited to grand city hotel lobbies than to a house meant solely to escape the heat in the drowsy days of summer.”

This description gives readers a sense of the grand scale on which the Vanderbilts lived. It is worth remembering that the house called The Breakers was merely a summer home, which gives one a sense of the opulence that was part of the family’s everyday life. It was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a grandson of the Commodore, and his wife Alice, completed in 1895 at the very end of the Gilded Age.

“In its 77 years of existence, The Breakers saw the equivalent of nearly $218 million evaporate into thin air.”

The Breakers also represented a kind of turning point in the family fortune. Only the first two generations—the Commodore himself and his son Billy—added to the Vanderbilt wealth. Though it was enormous, so was the family appetite for conspicuous consumption. This quotation shows an example of this: The house was built at the equivalent cost of $220 million in today’s money and was sold in 1972 for $2.3 million in today’s money. This relates to the theme of The Use and Misuse of Money.

“Cornelius Vanderbilt may not have been the first person to remake himself in New York City, but his rise from hardscrabble rural obscurity to a level of wealth never before seen in America, and rarely paralleled since, places him squarely within the persistent American mythology that holds that success is tantalizingly available to anyone with the cunning and discipline to seize it.”

Here again, the authors discuss the myth that anyone in America can be self-made with the proper initiative and smarts, one of the book’s themes. New York, in particular, looms large in this notion as a kind of magical place that offers the right mix of ingredients for such success, coupled with a singular fixation on money—both making it and spending it. Vanderbilt fit perfectly in this environment, though the authors remind readers that, in reality, others contributed to the Commodore’s success.

“Cornelius had no qualms about striking a deal with the British, who had shut down New York’s harbor. He moved supplies for the British military and, when possible, brought produce from up the Hudson River to hungry New Yorkers. The money Cornelius made playing both sides of the blockade allowed him to invest in two other periaugers.”

This passage reveals a bit of what made the Commodore so successful. His only guiding light was how to make more money; such niceties as ethics and scruples were for others. During the War of 1812, the British blockaded the entire East Coast of the United States, shutting down trade. As an American himself, he worked for the enemy, offering to ship supplies for the British military. He worked for the Americans as well, smuggling food at the same time—food that otherwise would have had to take the slow route by land due to the blockade. It was all an arrangement of convenience for Vanderbilt to make money.

“His last words have been a matter of some debate, with every newspaper reporting them differently. The Times has him saying ‘That was a good prayer.’ To that sentiment the Tribune adds that he breathed a single word: ‘Home.’ But one account has him giving Billy the most urgent instruction possible, an instruction designed to protect the legacy that Cornelius Vanderbilt was leaving to the children hovering by his bedside and to generations of grandchildren to come: ‘Keep the money together.’”

The authors note this as part of the theme regarding The Use and Misuse of Money. Whether or not the Commodore’s exhortation to keep the money together was true, it symbolized the challenge the family faced. He did his part by bequeathing the bulk of his inheritance to Billy, but later generations spent and divided the fortune, causing it to dwindle. The passage also hints at the theme of The Effects of Fame. The intense media scrutiny of famous people is such that the truth gets distorted, and facts are fabricated.

“The shades of the English and Dutch past that haunt the Vanderbilt origin story matter insofar as they tell us about the Commodore, and New York, and the specific set of circumstances that combined to create the opportunities that the Commodore was able to exploit.”

Cooper and Howe explain the importance of Cornelius Vanderbilt in the economic history of the United States. They go into some detail in the early chapters about the history of New York City under the Dutch, when it was called New Amsterdam. The city was entirely controlled by the Dutch West India Company, which ran it as a monopoly. Thus, all services were managed through exclusive rights, which stifled competition. The Commodore was one of the first to push back against this system and try to open it up.

“On March 2, 1824, the Supreme Court ruled in Gibbons’s favor in Gibbons v. Ogden, a case still cited frequently today, which marked the turn in America from monopolies to markets.”

This famous Supreme Court ruling is directly related to Vanderbilt’s work. At the time, he was working for Thomas Gibbons, running a ferry between New York and New Jersey. This was actually illegal because interstate ferries were, by law, the domain of monopolies. It was Vanderbilt who traveled to Washington, D.C., to engage the services of Daniel Webster on behalf of Gibbons to argue his case before the Supreme Court. Gibbons won, breaking the monopoly and opening ferries and other services to the free market, as states could no longer regulate interstate commerce. This would work to the benefit of Vanderbilt’s later businesses as well.

“Despite all this, Billy would go on to more than double the Commodore’s fortune in just eight years—the only one of the Vanderbilt descendants to add to the wealth they’d been handed. By 1885, when he died, Billy had amassed a staggering fortune of some $200 million, the equivalent of about $5.4 billion today.”

The Commodore’s son Billy continued what the father had begun in creating an empire of wealth based on transportation—first shipping, then railroads. Though he lived less than a decade longer than his father, Billy left to his heirs twice as much money as the Commodore had. This shows his quality of being an able manager of the family fortune, though the authors write that he did not share quite the thirst his father had for making money at all costs, nor did Billy innovate or branch into new endeavors, setting the stage for the wealth to slowly diminish.

“It is a truth readily acknowledged that a Vanderbilt heir in possession of a great fortune must be in want of ways to spend it. Fortunately, for Billy Vanderbilt, New York was a city unlike any other for opportunities to spend a great deal of money.”

This passage shows the writing style Cooper and Howe employ throughout the book to keep the reader engaged, the first line being a play on Jane Austen’s famous opening to her novel Pride and Prejudice (1813): “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” It also introduces the turn in the Vanderbilts’ financial condition. While Billy grew the family fortune, he also began the family’s quest to gain entrance to New York high society. This required great expenditures on things like extravagant homes and helping to found the Metropolitan Opera, initiating expenditures that drained off the family’s wealth.

“Mrs. Astor’s single insight turned on the necessity of laying claim to a heritage, even if it was an invented one. In her schema, social ambition could be seen as a nationalist project, an investment in Americanism at a moment during which the concept of ‘American’ was far from fixed. She also recognized early on the importance of money in a country without landed aristocracy. In New York, society and money would never be divorced again.”

The authors explain a fair amount about social history at this time, as necessary background for describing the Vanderbilts’ social lives. Chapter 4 relates how Caroline Astor and Ward McAllister more or less invented high society because the young nation had no history of it. There were no built-in class levels or specifically American social customs. In the end, the two pretty much created an equation consisting of sufficient wealth combined with Continental sensibilities, borrowing especially from the French style in many areas. This, along with their hand-picked “Four Hundred” people to meet their standard, created the first iteration of New York society.

“The crowd was studded here and there with reporters, their pencils poised to jot down all the details of who would soon be arriving, what they were wearing, what the flowers were like—and what about the music? The hostess had been leaking them details for weeks, but now the public hungered for the story, and the reporters stood by ready to feed them and slake their newfound thirst for celebrity.”

This passage, about Alva Vanderbilt’s famous ball in 1883, is an example of how the media feasted on tales of the wealthy upper classes. Newspapers helped to create a culture of celebrity that began to interest the general public. Alva was among the first to recognize this dynamic and, as the passage notes, leaked details to the press. Both the general public and the rest of high society took note. The former followed the story like any good tale while the latter took cues about what to expect and how to react. It was all part of Alva’s plan to compete with Caroline Astor in the social scene and raise the standing of the Vanderbilts.

“But Willie belonged to the first generation of Vanderbilts to feel that their primary purpose in life was to consume, which wasn’t much of a purpose. In 1920, shortly before he died, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, ‘My life was never destined to be quite happy...Inherited wealth is a real handicap to happiness. It is as certain a death to ambition as cocaine is to morality.’”

Willie was William Kissam Vanderbilt, one of Billy’s sons and a grandson of the Commodore. Here the authors note his role as a representative of the generation of Vanderbilts that began losing their vast wealth. It is part of the theme of The Use and Misuse of Money. Willie and his wife Alva did their part to consume lavishly and use up their inheritance without offsetting their expenditures with appropriate income. For instance, they owned a mansion on Fifth Avenue they called the Petit Chateau, another on Long Island called Idle Hour, and another in Newport called the Marble House.

“The train hung on Consuelo with all the pressure of her mother’s ambition; of the attention of the press and the salivating public; of the gossip about her parents; of the expectations of her name; of the triumph of American money marrying into actual honest-to-God British royalty—a massive mantle draping over her, smothering her.”

This quotation gets to the heart of the theme of The Effects of Fame. Consuelo Vanderbilt was the daughter of Willie and Alva, and her early life was controlled almost entirely by her mother. Alva had succeeded in placing the Vanderbilts at the top of New York society, and her plans for her daughter’s marriage were befitting such a standing. No less than royalty would be good enough. By this time—the mid-1890s—the press had long been churning out stories that contributed to the Vanderbilts’ fame. The public wanted the latest gossip, and the media gave it to them. Young Consuelo’s perspective as a flesh-and-blood individual, rather than a celebrity figure, is what the authors want to convey here: She felt smothered.

“The bridesmaids looked beautiful. And Consuelo—swan-necked, slender, with dark hair and eyes set in an oval face, like John Singer Sargent’s imagination of a Spanish dancer—they all agreed, looked radiant.

It was the worst day of Consuelo’s life.”

This is an example of Cooper and Howe’s writing style, which sometimes surprises. They set a scene that on the outside appears radiant, only to contradict it with a line like the last in this passage. This is in keep with their goal of portraying the lives of the Vanderbilts through their personal stories and their own feelings. To the public, things may have seemed to be a glittering fairy tale, but the reality was often different.

“But being replaced wasn’t the only thing that kindled the fires of Alva’s rage. What truly set her aflame was Willie’s exercise of power over her.”

The authors discuss the role of women at the time and in this social context through the life of Alva Vanderbilt. Her list of grievances was lengthy and led her to be among the first women in New York society to initiate a divorce from her husband. Notes for an unpublished memoir taken later in her life reveal the many aspects of the power differential and unequal expectations between men and women. Alva was a pioneer in seeking to redress this.

“Alfred’s fame never sat easily with him, not in the way that it had with other members of the Vanderbilt family. He didn’t deploy the press to his own purposes like the Commodore or Alva. But, in a way, the fame and attention that followed him in life and in his death meant that the impact of the Lusitania’s loss was felt even more keenly than it otherwise would have been.”

This passage presents the personal and public aspects of The Effects of Fame. Alfred’s unease with his status and disinterest in using his fame does not change his status in the public eye, and his death directly contributed to the nation’s ability to justify its entrance into World War I. When the Lusitania was sunk by the Germans, Alfred Vanderbilt’s fame drew greater attention to the event. Even in death, the fame of a Vanderbilt could have an impact on the country.

“Instead, Mr. Roosevelt had enjoyed his vacation and cheered on Harold S. Vanderbilt, the great-grandson of the Commodore, who had made his first fortune plying sailboats in New York Harbor in a never-ending loop between Staten Island and Manhattan, as Harold skippered his million-dollar racing yacht in a hotly contested series of thirty-mile circular races to nowhere. Rainbow, the magnificent racing machine, the pinnacle of maritime engineering and Vanderbilt money, would be scuttled by 1940.”

This is the last paragraph of Chapter 9, which describes the 1934 America’s Cup. President Franklin Roosevelt was among those who turned out in Newport to watch the race and hobnob with other society people. Cooper and Howe present this against the backdrop of a large-scale strike of textile workers that took place the same month in the East, including in the state of Rhode Island. The phrase “circular races to nowhere” implies that the authors see them as frivolous in the face of dire issues during the Great Depression; rather than creating something useful that might help the economy, the Vanderbilts are instead racing in circles (or even, circling the drain). The end of the passage deals with The Use and Misuse of Money, echoing the refrain of what came of so many of the Vanderbilts’ purchases: The winning yacht was demolished not a decade later.

“Baby Gloria was now the piggy bank for her entire household, and she couldn’t even talk.”

This arresting line is how the authors sum up the situation of Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt. It clearly shows the pressure brought to bear on Gloria from her earliest days and is another example of the theme regarding the use of money. Because of an odd twist of fate, Gloria’s own mother was largely broke, while Gloria had a multimillion-dollar trust fund set up by her grandfather. Her mother and the family’s servants would rely on it to support the Vanderbilt lifestyle, as a judge allowed for the trust to provide an allowance to support young Gloria. This warped the relationship between mother and daughter, and ultimately led to the famous legal battle for custody of the child.

“Everyone in this story wants something.

Money. Attention. Safety. Security.

But most of all, love. The one thing of which, no matter how privileged the surroundings, how polished the chauffeur-driven cars or delicate the crystal sherry glasses, there still never seems to be enough.”

This passage is how Cooper and Howe sum up the situation regarding Gloria Vanderbilt and the fight for custody. It summarizes the perspective of the participants and the goal set out in the Introduction. The themes regarding money and fame come up empty when faced with the one thing that neither can offer: love. That which is most desired by real people, especially young children like Gloria at the time, can get lost amid the lifestyle that the Vanderbilt family cultivated.

“On November 28, 1966, the crowds of gawking onlookers started gathering on Fifth Avenue in the afternoon, shuffling their feet against the biting chill of the Monday after Thanksgiving. ‘It was not a day like any other day,’ reported the New York Times. ‘The rain came down and the women poured out—from penthouses, town houses, duplexes and hotels.’”

Several chapters in the book include a passage similar to the above. Readers will notice a pattern after a while. There are two common elements here: the public and the press. So often, events in the lives of Vanderbilts involved these two elements—which contribute, of course, to fame. One sees how fame intrudes on everyday life and becomes part of the normal course of events. This affects everyone differently, and is perhaps of keen interest to Anderson Cooper himself, as his own life bridges these three worlds: that of the press, the public, and the Vanderbilts.

“As with many things surrounding the Vanderbilts, the truth, the reality of her life, was much different from the fantasy created by reporters and gossip columnists and strangers.”

This quotation, referring to Gloria Vanderbilt as an adult, sums up the theme of The Effects of Fame. The specific issue to which it refers (the value of her estate after her death) is irrelevant, because at some point it applied to everything. When one reaches the level of fame and celebrity that the Vanderbilt family had, almost nothing is entirely true as reported to the public. Truth and fiction get mixed up, and gossip creates its own reality. That again is what the authors try to emphasize throughout the book—that this phenomenon has real consequences for real people.

“No one can make money evaporate into thin air like a Vanderbilt.”

This line sums up more than a century of the Vanderbilt family’s lifestyle. Cooper tells the story of his mother asking him to buy her $50,000 decorative screens made from the antique wallpaper that had been in one of her previous homes. At that point, she did not have the money to buy them herself, yet her extravagant lifestyle remained unchanged. Half a year after he purchased them for her, she decided they did not fit as she thought they might, and asked him to remove them.