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Kate the socialite4/11/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() She immediately got her mother on the case. Then the unthinkable happened: all of her friends got their invitations and hers never came. Astor’s daughter, Carrie, was anxiously awaiting her invitation and even began practicing for a quadrille with her friends. The story goes, that like all marriageable young girls Mrs. According to an apocryphal tale, Alva used what was possibly the simplest weapon in her arsenal to gain admission to the New York 400: good old fashioned manipulation. With her access to seemingly endless amounts of money, she used every available resource – including the power of the press by inviting journalists to come in and preview the decorations before the ball began – to build excitement and to make it bigger than any ball before it. On MaAlva threw one of the most incredible parties that New York had ever seen. Her first move? Building an opulent French château style mansion designed by Richard Morris Hunt at 660 Fifth Avenue at 52nd street that literally overshadowed the dour, albeit luxurious, town homes that lined the avenue.Īs grand as the mansion was, the ball which served as her housewarming party was even grander. Alva made it her mission to bring the Vanderbilts into what she thought was their proper place in society, and onto the list of the 400. The Commodore’s grandson, William Kissam Vanderbilt, married the determined, pugilistic and socially ambitious Alva Erksine Smith from Mobile, Alabama (but schooled in Paris). The willful crassness of Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt, the ambitious entrepreneurial shipping and railroad industry mogul, and patriarch of the family, was still the stuff of legends. One family that they deemed wholly unsuitable were the Vanderbilts. This led to the creation of the famous List of 400 - the Four Hundred people who were New York’s high society. Astor and Ward McAllister had a whole new challenge in deciding who of the nouveau riche was acceptable. Thanks to the meteoric increase in millionaires in New York due to the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, many of whose fortunes rivaled or even surpassed the oldest of families, Mrs. They were the champions of old money and tradition.īut New York’s social hierarchy is not known for being static. ![]() It was up to them to decide if your last name was venerable enough or if your bloodlines were pure enough for entry into the upper ranks of society. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor and self-appointed “society expert” Ward McAllister were the authorities in all things upper class. (Emphasis, hers – to even ask which Astor was a sure sign that you were thoroughly ignorant in the most basic points of New York’s social hierarchy.) Mrs. Prior to the ball, Gilded Age New York society had been dominated by the Mrs. The best dressmakers and cobblers had spent months poring over old books making costumes - which were already being breathlessly described by the New York Times - as historically accurate as possible. The invitations had been hand delivered by servants in livery, young socialites had been practicing quadrilles (dances performed with four couples in a rectangular formation) for weeks, and “amid the rush and excitement of business, men have found their minds haunted by uncontrollable thoughts as to whether they should appear as Robert Le Diable, Cardinal Richelieu, Otho the Barbarian, or the Count of Monte Cristo, while the ladies have been driven to the verge of distraction in the effort to settle the comparative advantages of ancient, medieval, and modern costumes” ( New York Times). ![]() In the spring of 1883, the solemnity of Lent didn’t stand a chance against the social event on the mind of all of New York’s elite society: Mrs. ![]()
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