Vanderbilt houses
From the late 1870s to the 1920s the Vanderbilt clan employed America's best Beaux-Arts architects and decorators to build an unequalled string of New York townhouses and East Coast palaces in the United States. Many of the Vanderbilt houses are now National Historic Landmarks.
The list of architects employed by the Vanderbilts is a who's who of the New York-based firms that embodied the syncretic (often dismissed as "eclectic") styles of the American Renaissance: Richard Morris Hunt, George B. Post, McKim, Mead and White, Carrere and Hastings, Warren and Wetmore, Horace Trumbauer John Russell Pope, Addison Mizner were all employed by the descendants of 'Commodore' Cornelius Vanderbilt, who built only very modestly himself.
Some Vanderbilt houses
- William Kissam Vanderbilt I (1849-1920), 'Idle Hour', Oakdale, Long Island, New York; built 1878-1879; Richard Morris Hunt (destroyed by fire, 1899), 660 Fifth Avenue, New York, demolished 1926.
- William Kissam Vanderbilt I, 'George Washington Vanderbilt II (1862-1914), "Biltmore", Asheville, North Carolina, built 1888-1895; Richard Morris Hunt ()
