10 Gilded Age Landmarks in New York City Still Standing Today

By the turn of the 20th century, the nouveau riche Vanderbilts had taken over the stretch of Fifth Avenue between 51st and 57th streets by building colossal palaces. There was the French Renaissance and Gothic style castle that Alva and William K. Vanderbilt (who inspired the Russells of The Gilded Age) commissioned in 1882 on the corner of 52nd Street. Next door that same year, William H. Vanderbilt (William K.'s father) built his Doric and Corinthian style Triple Palace. And also in 1882, Cornelius II built what would become the city's largest single family house on the block that is now Bergdorf's. In the early 1900s, the family sold one of their plots to Morgan Plant, son of railroad tycoon Henry Plant, who, by 1905, officially became a neighbor on Vanderbilt Row with a mansion that is now the iconic Cartier maison—in 1917, Louis and Pierre Cartier bought the Plant residence for $100 in cash and a double-stranded pearl necklace valued at the time at $1 million.