Husband William Kissam Vanderbilt

Queer Places:
Colony Club, 120 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016, USA
Colony Club, 564 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065, Stati Uniti
1 Sutton Pl, New York, NY 10022, Stati Uniti
Moravian Cemetery, 2205 Richmond Rd, Staten Island, NY 10306, Stati Uniti

Anne Harriman Sands Rutherfurd Vanderbilt (February 17, 1861 – April 20, 1940) was an American heiress known for her marriages to prominent men and her role in the development of the Sutton Place neighborhood as a fashionable place to live.

Anne was born on February 17, 1861. She was one of eight children born to banker Oliver Harriman (1829–1904) and Laura (née Low) Harriman (1834–1901).[1] Her siblings included Oliver Harriman, Jr. (1862–1940), J. Borden Harriman (1864–1914), and Herbert M. Harriman (1873–1933).[2] Her first cousin E. H. Harriman, father of Governor W. Averell Harriman (1891–1986).

In 1903, along with Anne Morgan and Elisabeth Marbury, Anne helped organize the Colony Club, the first women's social club in New York.[3] They engaged Stanford White, then New York's most famous architect, to design the interiors of the Club.[4] Reading the diaries Morgan began keeping in 1903, Alfred Allan Lewis argues that she fell in love with Marbury but that Marbury, while flattered by and welcoming of the younger woman's ardor, remained primarily devoted to de Wolfe. She became a role model for Morgan's own career as an activist and for her subsequent romantic and socially influential partnership with Anne Vanderbilt.


First Colony Club, NYC


Second Colony Club House, NYC


1 Sutton Pl, New York, NY 10022

Anne was also known for her philanthropy and for devoting "herself to those less fortunate". She financed the construction of the "open-stair" apartment houses, four large buildings that contained almost 400 apartments on Avenue A in Manhattan. The buildings were created to house tuberculosis patients. Vanderbilt donated $1,000,000 and the buildings were completed in 1910.[5]

In 1916, she hosted a fundraiser for the war sufferers of Venice.[6]

In 1919, she was made a Knight of the Légion d'Honneur by the French government and in 1932, she received the rank of Officer of the Légion d'Honneur.

During her marriage to Vanderbilt, they lived together in his mansion located at 660 Fifth Avenue that was designed by Richard Morris Hunt for William and his first wife, Ava. Anne, who had more modest tastes, sold the mansion for $3,000,000 to the Empire Trust Company after his death in 1920.[7] The home was eventually torn down and a new office building was erected in its place.[8] In 1921, she also sold their country home, "Stepping Stones", in Wheatley Hills in Jericho on Long Island for $500,000 to Ormond Gerald Smith. The estate was around 125 acres and had a home commissioned by her late husband and designed by John R. Hill.[9]

In 1921, Anne then purchased the former home of Effingham B. Sutton, at 1 Sutton Place, for $50,000 in the then new neighborhood of Sutton Place, also in Manhattan.[10] Before her move, along with Elizabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan,[11] her sister, Mrs. Stephen H. Olin, the neighborhood was known as a squalid place. Vanderbilt, Marbury, and Morgan each hired Mott B. Schmidt (1889–1977),[12] an American architect best known for his buildings in the American Georgian Classical style,[13] to build, or in Vanderbilt's case, renovate homes in the neighborhood.[14] The society pages of ''The New York Times'' scoffed at their relocation and referred to the areas as an "Amazon Enclave."

Mott transformed the home into a thirteen-room townhouse with terraced gardens that overlooked the East River. The cost of the home renovation was approximately $75,000 in 1921.[15] Vanderbilt had Elsie de Wolfe design the interiors. The terrace, done by Renee Prahar, featured two center pillars with ornamental monkeys holding globes of light in their hands.[16] By January 1929, ''The Times'' changed their tune and wrote:[17]

"Five years ago, when Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt established her residence in Sutton Place overlooking the East River, it was little dreamed that within so short a time such a marked migration from mid-Manhattan to the East River district would occur as is now in full swing. In the unbroken line of new apartments, lining Fifty-seventh Street almost solidly from Second Avenue to Sutton Place, those who doubted the wisdom of Mrs. Vanderbilt's move have found a convincing answer to their conjectures as to the ultimate success of the Sutton Place movement."

She married firstly sportsman Samuel Stevens Sands II (1856–1889),[18] the son of Samuel Stevens Sands (1827-1892), the head of S.S. Sands Co.[19] Before his death from a fall during a hunt at Meadow Brook, she had two sons by Sands:[20]

Her second marriage was on June 16, 1890 to Lewis Morris Rutherfurd, Jr. (1834–1901), son of the astronomer Lewis Morris Rutherfurd and brother to Winthrop Rutherfurd. Before his death, she had two daughters by Rutherford:

On April 29, 1903, she married her third husband, William Kissam Vanderbilt (1849–1920), in London.[39] Vanderbilt, who had previously been married to Alva Smith and divorced in 1895, was the son of William Henry Vanderbilt and Maria Louisa Kissam. He was the father of Consuelo Vanderbilt, William Kissam Vanderbilt II, and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt.[40] They also remained married until his death. She had no children by Vanderbilt.[41]

Anne died on April 20, 1940.[42] She was buried inside The Vanderbilt mausoleum at the Moravian Cemetery, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and constructed in 1885–1886, part of the family's private section within the cemetery. Their mausoleum is a replica of a Romanesque church in Arles, France. The landscaped grounds around the Vanderbilt mausoleum were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Vanderbilt section is not open to the public.[43]

Anne Vanderbilt is also connected with Elizabeth Milbank Anderson.

References:


Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time Paperback – January 29, 2026
by Elisa Rolle

Other references:

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