Anne Harriman Sands Rutherfurd Vanderbilt (February 17, 1861 – April 20, 1940) was an American heiress known for her marriages to prominent men[1] and her role in the development of the
Sutton Place neighborhood as a fashionable place to live.[2]
In 1903, along with
Anne Morgan and
Elisabeth Marbury, Anne helped organize the
Colony Club, the first women's social club in New York.[5] They engaged
Stanford White, then New York's most famous architect, to design the interiors of the club.[6]
Anne was also known for her philanthropy and for devoting "herself to those less fortunate".[5] She financed the construction of the "open-stair" apartment houses, four large buildings that contained almost 400 apartments on what is now
York Avenue in Manhattan. The buildings were created to house
tuberculosis patients. Vanderbilt donated $1,000,000 and the buildings were completed in 1910.[7]
In 1916, she hosted a fundraiser for the war sufferers of Venice.[8]
In 1919, she was made a Knight of the
Légion d'Honneur by the French government and in 1932, she received the rank of Officer of the Légion d'Honneur.[1]
Residences
In 1921, she also sold their country home, "Stepping Stones", in Wheatley Hills in
Jericho on
Long Island for $500,000 to
Ormond Gerald Smith.[9] The estate was around 125 acres and had a home commissioned by her late husband and designed by John R. Hill.[9]
In 1921, Anne then purchased the former home of Effingham B. Sutton, at 1 Sutton Place, for $50,000 in the then-new neighborhood of
Sutton Place, also in Manhattan.[10] Before her move, along with Elizabeth Marbury,
Anne Morgan,[11] her sister, Emeline Harriman Olin, second wife of
Stephen Henry Olin, the neighborhood was known as a squalid place.[6] Vanderbilt, Marbury, and Morgan each hired
Mott B. Schmidt (1889–1977),[12] an American architect best known for his buildings in the American Georgian Classical style,[13] to build, or in Vanderbilt's case, renovate homes in the neighborhood.[14] The society pages of The New York Times scoffed at their relocation and referred to the areas as an "Amazon Enclave."[6]
Mott transformed the home into a thirteen-room townhouse with terraced gardens that overlooked the
East River.[15] The cost of the home renovation was approximately $75,000 in 1921.[16] Vanderbilt had
Elsie de Wolfe design the interiors.[10] The terrace, done by
Renee Prahar, featured two center pillars with ornamental monkeys holding globes of light in their hands.[17] By January 1929, The Times changed their tune and wrote:[2]
Five years ago, when Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt established her residence in Sutton Place overlooking the East River, it was little dreamed that within so short a time such a marked migration from mid-Manhattan to the East River district would occur as is now in full swing. In the unbroken line of new apartments, lining Fifty-seventh Street almost solidly from Second Avenue to Sutton Place, those who doubted the wisdom of Mrs. Vanderbilt's move have found a convincing answer to their conjectures as to the ultimate success of the Sutton Place movement.[2]
Barbara Cairncross Rutherfurd (1895–1939),[24] who married Cyril Hatch, son of Charles Henry Hatch, in 1916.[25][26][27] They had one child, Rutherfurd L. Hatch (d. 1947),[28] before divorcing in 1920.[29][30] In 1924, she married Winfield Jesse Nicholls, a fellow follower of
Oom the Omnipotent.[31] After having two children, Guy Winfield Nicholls[32] and Margaret Mary Nicholls,[33] they divorced in 1930.[34][35][36]
Anne died on April 20, 1940.[1] She was buried inside the Vanderbilt mausoleum at the
Moravian Cemetery, designed by
Richard Morris Hunt and constructed in 1885–1886, part of the family's private section within the cemetery. Their mausoleum is a replica of a Romanesque church in
Arles,
France. The landscaped grounds around the Vanderbilt mausoleum were designed by
Frederick Law Olmsted. The Vanderbilt section is not open to the public.[42]
^"Mrs. M. S. Rutherfurd Wed To F. L. Sprague"(PDF), The New York Times, New York City, 27 November 1939. Margaret was the daughter of Anne Harriman, the second wife of
William Kissam Vanderbilt, and her second husband, Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, son of the astronomer
Lewis Morris Rutherfurd. After divorcing Dukes, Margaret Rutherfurd successively married Charles Michel Joachim Napoléon, Prince Murat, and Frederick Leybourne Sprague (1907–1993).