ABSTRACT
Acting apparently on the proposition that New York had been properly stunned by the Vanderbilts' local elegances, Willie K. thought up a nice birthday gift for his wife. The marriage also came pretty high, even by Vanderbilt standards of pecuniary values. The album remarked that the new Vanderbilt home stood as "a representative of the new impulse felt in the national life." In the art gallery of his new home Mr. Vanderbilt hung his collection, heavy with Meissoniers. Young Mrs. Vanderbilt's crashing of the four-hundred barrier is generally credited to her taste in architecture. "The mighty churches of New York and Chicago/' observed Matthew Josephson, "were filled to bursting with the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the Wanamakers, the Morgans, the Armours, the Pullmans, and all their kin, who paid for these churches." A foundation takes the place of a new churchy or merely a bell for a new church.
