- The Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York, was built by Frederick Vanderbilt in the 1890s.
- The 45,000-square-foot Gilded Age mansion is located on 153 acres of land in the Hudson Valley.
- The National Park Service offers tours of the mansion to the public.
During the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in America with a net worth of $100 million, or around $200 billion today — more money than the US Treasury had at the time.
After Cornelius’ death in 1937, his son William Vanderbilt took over the businesses and doubled his father’s fortune. He died the wealthiest private individual in the world in 1885.
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William’s son, Frederick Vanderbilt, and his wife, Louise, purchased a 153-acre Hyde Park property in 1895. Construction on the mansion began in 1895 and was finished three years later.
The mansion and its grounds are now owned by the National Park Service, which offers tours of the property. I visited the Vanderbilt mansion in February 2023 to see its opulent rooms for myself.
