The bloom

Tending the community garden in Riverside Park. 4:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch.

Monday, April 15, 2013. A beautiful early Spring weekend in New York.

On Sunday I went into Carl Schurz Park to get some photos of The Bloom. This is joy all around; a chance to get outdoors in the Sun. We’re halfway to May when the flowers really start to show themselves, and off to a good start.

I had a sick dog. Missy aka Madame. Missy under these circumstances. She was acting weird – just sitting there, staring at nothing, late on Saturday afternoon. She’s one of those dogs who likes to get into things, scavenge, look for some morsel that I didn’t know was there; something she might chew or gnaw on; anything. If I leave my rubbish/garbage in a plastic bag hanging on a drawerknob in the kitchen, she’ll nip at the bottom until she opens it -- and like a piñata, she revels in the (possible) riches (if I’m not looking) for a canine scavenger. I have great affection for all my dogs, but this one makes me laugh all the time, and it is often at my expense. I think she knows that. That’s why I call her Madame.

Entering Carl Schurz Park at 86th Street.

A little one walk atop the stone ledge outside the Park amidst the forsythia.

The pears in bloom in front of the Queen Anne-style red-brick houses of "Henderson Place" historic district on East End Avenue between 86th and 87th Street, across from Carl Schurz, built in 1891- 92 when the avenue was known as Avenue B (uptown).

A tunnel of blooming pears on East 87th Street looking west.

The same trees looking west from inside the Park.

Man practicing his tight rope.

An impromptu game of badminton next to the Promenade.

Saturday night when I went to lift her, however, she yelped and snapped at me. She was in pain, And her belly felt hard as a rock. I looked it up on the web of course. About 11:30 Saturday night I thought it might be a good idea to hit an all-night animal hospital. Animal Medical Center. So I took her. She walked, very quickly, as is her habit down East End Avenue. She actually often pulled me. And then she stopped to relieve herself. Very steady, very healthy. We got to the corner of 79th Street and she was still moving along as if she had places to go. So I figured maybe it was “gas” and she’d just have to work it out. We returned home instead.

Sunday morning she did something she never does: she wouldn’t eat her breakfast. Usually she eats faster (and more) than the other two and then she raids theirs while they’re eating. If I’m not watching. So not eating was an alarm bell.

Yesterday afternoon we went down to the AMC, Missy and I. She still had the strong gait. Until she stopped. And sat. Then I had to pick her up. We spent two hours there. There was a consultation, then some kind of blood work, then a sonar to see what was going on inside. Nothing remarkable. It was concluded that she had gas or something that she hadn’t moved along. Gastroenteritis. We came home with a couple days ‘ painkillers if necessary.

Missy, Jenny, and Byrone.

$713. Uh-huh. That scared me too. Not for me so much, because fortunately I could pay. But what about all the dogs out there whose masters/mistresses can’t pay it. Prohibitively high medical bills do not encourage pet ownership, to grossly understate the matter. All of my dogs are/have been “rescue” dogs. All my life. And when I had cats, the same. All of those dogs and cats were pets that someone gave up, didn’t want, threw away. They need us to save them from us. What I get in return is beautiful Life. That’s what they have to offer.


	Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the family fortune which showered millions on scores of his descendents in the succeeding four generations.

	William Harrison Vanderbilt, named by his father for President William Henry Harrison. He lived relatively modestly until his father died and left him the richest man in the world. He died nine years after his father after increasing his inherited fortune to almost $200 million in 1886, four years after the completion of the Fifth Avenue houses.

Late last evening, I gave Madame a tiny sliver of freshly roasted chicken. She took it tentatively and savored it so. She took a second. That was enough for now. She’s going to be 11 on May 27th. A Gemini, little Madame.

Vanderbilt Savings Time. Last Friday morning I got up at the crack of dawn (having gone to bed just a few hours before when we went up online for the day), to go over to the Doyle Galleries on East 87th Street (between Third and Lex) to a “breakfast” talk they were having.

Doyle is having a sale today of pieces from the estate of the late Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl who died in 2011 at the age of 107.

Mrs. Earl’s father was William K. Vanderbilt Jr. the son of Willie K. and Alva. Her mother was Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt– known as “Birdie,” and first wife of Willie K Jr. Her father’s sister was the famous Consuelo Vanderbilt (later Balsan), the heiress whose socially ambitious mother forced her against her will to marry Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough. It is one of the great romantic tales of the Gilded Age and it added a romantic luster to the Vanderbilt name that lasted for several generations.

When Cornelius Vanderbilt died in his 83rd year in 1877, he left a fortune of approximately $100 million (or tens of billions in today’s dollar). He left 90% of it to one son William H. There was a big fight over the will after the old man croaked since the daughters and other son (Cornelius Jeremiah) were left less than a million each.

The old man had sincerely felt that was fair because he himself was not especially ostentatious when it came to his own living standards. Although he did own a mansion on Washington Square, in now way did it compare with what his descendents would build for themselves and their children. Nor would he have built such palaces for himself. His money was his palace. No doubt he would have preferred to take it with him, but, alas…

The great double mansion of William H. Vanderbilt, completed in 1882 on the west side of Fifth Avenue between 51st and 52nd Street. The northernmost wing contained two large residences occupied by two of his daughters and their families. The turreted chateau to the right was the home of William K and Alva Vanderbilt their three children. Farther up the block are houses of two more of William H's children.

The petit chateau of Alva and William K. Vanderbilt on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and completed in 1883. Alva Vanderbilt was the "builder" in the family. It was the "housewarming" party at this mansion that launched the Vanderbilts into prominence of New York society. It also ushered in the use of limestone as a facade, in a city of brownstones (as you can see surrounding). Fifth years later that block of 52nd Street to the west became known as "Jazz Street" where every doorway was a speakeasy, often with brothel upstairs, and subsequently after Prohibition was repealed, the speaks became jazz joints hosting many of the now great immortals of Jazz and popular American music. By 1926, when the Jazz babies were moving into the neighborhood, the Vanderbilts were long gone. The house was sold and demolished.

Like his father, William H. had a large family of eight or nine children. No sooner had he inherited when he embarked on a move outside his known personality – he built a double palace for himself and his family on Fifth Avenue taking up the entire west side of the block between 51st and 52nd Street. He also doubled his father’s legacy and then less than ten years after his father, he died.

William H. left the bulk of his fortune to his two eldest sons: William Kissam and Cornelius II. Both of those boys built huge mansions also on Fifth. Right next door, Willie K. as he was known, and his firecracker of a Southern belle of a wife Alva built their chateau across the street from pappy – on the northwest corner of Fifth and 52nd Street. Cornelius II, of course, built a palace of 143 rooms that occupied the entire west side of the block between 57th and 58th Street.

After the death of the legendary Commodore – as he was known in his lifetime – the Vanderbilts graduated to the life style of royalty as we like to imagine it: riches and leisure unlimited. The old man’s fortune ended up enriching hundreds of his descendents in varying degrees. The earlier descendents lived like kings. They led lives of leisure, living in luxury, high, wide and handsome.

William K. Vanderbilt Jr., son of Alva and Willie K, brother of Consuelo and Harold, father of Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl, at age 24 in 1902.

Willie K and Alva's daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt at age 25, as the Duchess of Marlborough attending the coronation of King Edward VII.

Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl was a member of the Fifth Generation of this American fortune that came to symbolize an irresistible excess and hauteur. In real life a lot of these Vanderbilts were, like the rest of us, trying to sort it out – whatever “it” was for them. To the American public they seemed to live like royalty, as if it came naturally to them. Evidently it did for some.

Mrs. Earl was married four times, but like many heiresses, she pretty much lived the way she wanted. She had been one of three children. Her only brother died in a horrific accident in the early 1930s.

The boy’s death evidently was a tragedy from which his mother never recovered. She died just a few years after at an early middle-age. She was survived by Consuelo and daughter Muriel who was three years older than Consuelo. (Muriel predeceased her by thirty-nine years – in 1972.)

Consuelo Earl, like her aunt and namesake, had a penchant for animals. Dogs. She raised Skye terriers, poodles, afghans, more terriers. Later in her life she bought a big piece of property in Ridgefield, Connecticut and raised miniature farm animals – cows, horses, chickens, etc., to all of which she was devoted.

Consuelo, the duchess, with her father William K. Vanderbilt, then long divorced from her mother Alva in Paris at the races.

Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl with one of her prized Skye terriers.

Consuelo and her father William K. Vanderbilt Jr., 1931.

The miracle of old age was no blessing for the lady. At 90 she began to withdraw. She became blind and her daughter recalls that it was a very hard, very long time in getting to the end of such a great age.

The items going on sale this morning (possibly completed by the time you see this), are interesting reflections of that time and era of wealth and the Leisure Class in America. Luxury not a label but an aspect of the rarified. If you had to know how much it cost, then, as Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan is said to have put it: you can’t afford it.

Although she is not remembered as a woman who was fascinated with, or collected, jewels, Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl nevertheless left a plethora of precious and beautiful collectibles -- such as the Mystery Clock, and a Gold Tray inscribed Alva 1931, the ship named for Mrs. Earl’s paternal grandmother. The Alva was known as the world’s first superyacht – 265 feet. On her maiden voyage she traveled 28,182 miles circumnavigating the globe collecting marine specimens for Mr. Vanderbilt’s Marine Museum. The estimate is $125,000 - $175,000.

Consuelo's wedding in 1936 to her second husband, Henry G. Davis II on her father's Fisher Island in Miami. Left to right: the bride's aunt, Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, her husband Jacques Balsan; Mr. and Mrs. William Vanderbilt, Mrs. Henry G. Davis Jr, mother of the groom, and the wedding couple.

Coincidentally, I’ve been reading JC Stiles great biography of “The First Tycoon,” Cornelius Vanderbilt who lived between 1794 and 1877. One tough hombre. He loved money – not for what it could buy him, but just for the making it. Like winning the race. He loved racehorses too. He was the Sultan of Speed in the 19th century. It’s nothing to us Nuclear Age babies, but back then until Henry Ford came along, Cornelius Vanderbilt was the man who made speed a popular choice, preference, pleasure and profit, propelling us into the American Century. There are literally hundreds of descendents of this man who was born and grew up on Staten Island and came of age just as New York was a-bornin’.

Art Deco Gold, Silver, Lapis, Nephrite Jade, Mother-of-Pearl and Diamond Desk Clock, Cartier, France, circa 1925. Est. $20,000 - $30,000.

Art Deco Platinum, Ruby and Diamond Clip, Cartier. 8 cushion and cut-corner emerald cut rubies approximately 6.45 cts, edged and topped by 79 round and sing-cut diamonds, approximately 5.00 cts. Circa 1930. Est. $20,000 - $30,000

Art Deco Rock Crystal, Gold, Black Onyx, Enamel and Diamond "Model A" Mystery Clock, made by Cartier in France, completed in 1913. Mystery clocks required up to seven craftsmen to create, sometimes taking up to a year. They appealed to sophisticated American industrialists, including J. P. Morgan who owned the first Mystery Clock "Model A" sold in the United States. Est. $200,000 - $400,000

Set of Twelve Gold Cordial Cups, Tiffany & Co. 18kt., height 2 ½ inches, diameter 2 1/8 inches. Est. $40,000 - $60,000.

No other Vanderbilt made a personal fortune after the Commodore until Gloria Vanderbilt came along a century later – selling women’s jeans and perfumes. The man’s fortune enriched the lives of hundreds if not thousands although some of their family offspring married individuals who greatly increased their fortunes. While others lost it all along the road of the high life.