Demolished mansion in Manhattan, New York
The Triple Palace, also known as the William H. Vanderbilt House, was an elaborate mansion at 640 Fifth Avenue between 51st Street and 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The urban mansion, completed in 1882 to designs by John B. Snook and Charles B. Atwood, was owned by members of the Vanderbilt family. It was composed of two portions: a single-family unit to the south and a two-family unit to the north. William Henry Vanderbilt owned and lived in the southern portion. Two of his daughters, Emily Thorn Vanderbilt and Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt Shepard, along with their respective families, occupied the two residences in the northern portion.
The mansion had a brownstone facade as well as a courtyard and portico separating the two sections. William Henry Vanderbilt's portion of the house had elaborate decor, with 58 rooms designed in a different style, as well as a central three-story art gallery with a large skylight. William Henry's section also included an elaborate dining room, library, parlor, and drawing room on the first floor, as well as bedrooms on the second floor for himself, his wife, and his youngest children. Emily's and Margaret's sections of the house were designed in a less lavish style.
William Henry Vanderbilt had commissioned the mansion in part to provide space for his paintings, as well as a residence for his two daughters. Upon its completion, the mansion was generally criticized. After William Henry's death in 1885, the house passed on to numerous members of his family. It became known as the home of Henry Clay Frick, who renovated and rented the house from 1905 to 1913, when he built the Henry Clay Frick House, inspired by the Triple Palace and its art collection. Cornelius Vanderbilt III hired Horace Trumbauer to design another renovation for the house in 1916. The northern section of the Vanderbilt house was demolished in 1927, while the southern section was destroyed in 1947; both sections were replaced by high-rise buildings.
Architecture.
The William H. Vanderbilt House occupied the entire east side of the block bounded by 51st Street to the south, 52nd Street to the north, Fifth Avenue to the east, and Sixth Avenue to the west. The house was described in popular press as two mansions and known as the "Triple Palace" or the "Vanderbilt Twins". However, the structure was a single mansion built at one time, with three residential units across two sections.
William Henry Vanderbilt hired John B. Snook and Charles B. Atwood to design and furnish the mansion, and he hired the Herter Brothers to decorate the space. Snook was the architect of record for the mansion, but there is evidence of both Atwood's and the Herter Brothers' involvement. The Herter Brothers disputed the claim that either Snook or Atwood were responsible for the overall design. When the Herter Brothers wrote "American Architect and Building News" to complain, the journal's editors pointed out that Atwood and Snook's names were listed on the building permit for the house.
Layout and courtyard.
The mansion occupied a site of . The southern section at 640 Fifth Avenue was a single-family unit, occupied by William Henry Vanderbilt, his wife Maria Louisa Kissam, and their youngest son George. The southern section measured deep and either or wide. The northern section contained a pair of units occupied by the families of two of Vanderbilt's daughters. The unit at 642 Fifth Avenue was occupied by Emily Thorn Vanderbilt and her husband William Douglas Sloane, while that at 2 West 52nd Street was occupied by Margaret Louisa Vanderbilt and her husband Elliott Fitch Shepard. The northern section was slightly narrower than the southern one. Both sections were connected at the first story, but the upper stories were disconnected from each other. The doors separating the three residences could be opened to create a large event space.
A short balustrade and a planting strip separated the mansion from the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, though this was removed in 1911. Bronze lighting fixtures were mounted atop the pillars of the balustrade, and metal fencing was installed between the pillars. When the mansion was completed, it was surrounded on all sides by grass.
Between the two sections on Fifth Avenue was a courtyard leading to an entrance portico. A pavement stone in front of the portico measured , with dimensions of . The stone, supposedly the largest ever quarried in the United States, was transported to the construction site by barge since it could not fit on a train. Nearby were numerous similarly large stones, measuring on average wide and long. A "New York Times" reporter said the stones had been laid "on three parallel walls of solid rock". Right in front of the portico was a large bluestone entrance step measuring across. The portico served as the southern section's entrance, while the northern section was accessed from 52nd Street.
Facade.
The house was designed in the Doric and Corinthian styles with a facade made of Connecticut brownstone. Snook and Atwood had originally planned to face the building in light Ohio limestone with red and black limestone trim. However, William Henry Vanderbilt had changed the plans at the last minute because he wanted a distinctive, cheap, and familiar material. The foundation walls were made of stone laid in sand and cement, resting on natural rock. The upper walls ranged in thickness from . The firm of H &amp; A. S. Dickinson quarried the brownstone for the building.
Horizontal string courses divided the three main stories of the facade on all sides. Near the top of the ground-floor windows was an entablature with carvings of vines, which wrapped around all sides. The second-story windows were decorated with acanthus leaves. The ground- and second-story windows were originally complemented with vases containing flowers. Above the third story was an entablature with a blind frieze, followed by a blind attic. A cornice decorated with lions' heads, as well as a perforated parapet, ran above the attic on all sides. The top of the building had a flat roofline surrounded by a balustrade. The roof was about above the sidewalk and was made of red tiles.
Along the Fifth Avenue elevation, the central portion of either section was recessed from the outer windows. The ground level had square-headed window openings that, about two-thirds of the way up, were interspersed with the entablature. The second-story openings were flanked by pilasters and topped by carved lintels. The capitals atop the pilasters were ornately carved. The third-story openings had round-headed arches that were flanked by carved panels and topped by narrow archivolts. Midway up the third story, a carved frieze ran horizontally across the facade.
Features.
William H. Vanderbilt's residence in the southern section had elaborate decor, including an extensive art collection. There were 58 rooms in the southern residence, each designed in a different style. The Nashville "Daily American" described the northern section's decorations as being ornate but "less utterly utter" than those in the southern section.
Shortly after the house was completed, a ten-volume series entitled "Mr. Vanderbilt's House and Collection" was privately published, which documented the William H. Vanderbilt house and art collection. One thousand copies were printed of the series, which art historian Earl Shinn authored under the pen name "Edward Strahan". The industrialist Henry Clay Frick had a noted admiration for the mansion, its art collection, and William Henry Vanderbilt's status. The building and art collection prompted Frick to create his own mansion and art collection, today a public museum known as the Frick Collection. Frick also purchased four volumes of the "Mr. Vanderbilt" series, as well as twenty satin reproductions of paintings in Vanderbilt's collection. Some of these were hung at Clayton, Frick's house in Pittsburgh.
Structural features.
The superstructure of the Triple Palace consisted of wrought-iron beams supporting the floors and roof. The floor beams were designed to be capable of supporting while the roof beams were designed to support . "Fireproof material" such as brick arches was infilled between the wrought-iron beams. The brick partition walls were designed to be at least thick. Much of the ornamentation was made in papier-mâché rather than plaster. The entire house was steam-heated, except for the conservatory in the northern portion of the building, which was heated by hot water.
The basement was blasted out of solid rock and measured tall. The basement contained numerous rooms, including a kitchen, staff rooms, coal vaults, and mechanical rooms for the elevators and electricity. The basement also included storage closets, wine cellars, laundry and drying rooms, furnace rooms, and pantries. The first floor had a ceiling tall. Ceiling heights decreased at subsequent stories, with the second story being tall, the third story being tall, and the attic being tall.
Entrance vestibule.
The portico from Fifth Avenue led to an entrance vestibule between the two sections, from which the southern half of the house was accessed. It had an exterior of brownstone, like the rest of the house, but the front elevation was not enclosed. The floor of the vestibule was paved in marble mosaic tiles. Mosaics also decorated the vestibule's walls. The vestibule's ceiling was a skylight made of stained glass and iron, just below the second story of the house. The ceiling was infilled with mosaic was made by Facchina of Venice.
The center of the vestibule featured a malachite vase measuring tall. The vase was acquired from the collection of Pavel Nikolaievich Demidov and had been made by Pierre-Philippe Thomire. On the south wall was a large pair of doors leading to a hallway in William Henry Vanderbilt's residence. Inspired by Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise in Florence, the doors cost $25,000 (equivalent to $ in 2023) and were reported by contemporary media as being made of bronze. The art historian E. Wayne Craven wrote that the doors were really just "thin metal screwed to a common wooden frame".
Ground floor.
The "bronze" doors opened into a hallway in the southern section, with marble tiling and wood paneling. The south wall, opposite the entrance door, had a large fireplace with a mantelpiece made of marble, as well as bronze reliefs of female figures flanking a marble shaft. To the right was a stairway to the upper floors, while to the left was a set of carved oaken seats and a door leading to the drawing room. Throughout the hallway were iron columns with red polished marble, which supported architectural galleries on the upper stories.
Extending west from the southern section's hallway was the art gallery, measuring . The gallery was described as being high; at night, it was lit by 169 gas jets. The gallery originally featured 207 oils and watercolors from various European artists. Art was hung salon-style in the gallery. Despite the size of the gallery, Vanderbilt's collection soon grew to require an additional smaller gallery to show watercolors and drawings. The art gallery had its own entrance from 51st Street. Attached to the art gallery was an "aquarella room" of , separated from the gallery by an archway, as well as a conservatory room on the opposite wall.
The south side of the hallway led to the southern section's main dining room, which measured and had wood wainscoting, a fireplace with carved mantel, and tapestries and paintings. The south dining room had an elliptical arched ceiling, which was divided into panels with carved fruit and foliate motifs. A butler's pantry abutted the dining room.
The eastern portion of the southern section's hallway led to a drawing room, parlor, and library facing Fifth Avenue. The drawing room measured and had red velvet walls with mother-of-pearl butterflies; a red carpet; and a ceiling mural painted by Pierre-Victor Galland. The mother-of-pearl appeared to make the decorations glow whenever the room was illuminated. North of the drawing room was a library, which contained furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The rosewood library table was decorated with designs of six continents, and the chairs and wallpaper contained hangings. South of the drawing room was a Japanese-themed parlor with hanging tapestries and lacquered cabinets, as well as a faux bamboo ceiling with rafters stained to resemble red lacquer.
The double unit in the northern section was designed with mirrored parlors, libraries, dining rooms, and reception rooms on the ground floor. A butler's pantry was located off the dining rooms, while a billiards room was in the rear of the double residence.
Upper stories.
The southern section's grand staircase had an ornate