Why The Vanderbilts Sold The Biggest House In Manhattan For 7 Million

In 1883, Cornelius Vanderbilt II, grandson of the Commodore, finished a red-brick château at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. Nine years later he knocked down five more brownstones and turned it into the largest private home ever built in New York: about 130 rooms, a five-storey stone hall, a two-storey ballroom, a fireplace by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge, and iron gates forged in Paris. Within a few years he had suffered a stroke, and in 1899 he was dead, leaving his widow Alice a seven million dollar trust that was just enough to keep the house running.