Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (December 20, 1850 - February 22, 1921) was one of the most influential American philanthropists, art collectors, and public health advocates of
the early 20th century.Queer Places:
6 E 38th St, New York, NY 10016, USA
661 5th Ave, New York, NY 10019, USA
Putnam Cemetery, 35 Parsonage Rd, Greenwich, CT 06830, United States
Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (December 20, 1850 - February 22, 1921) was one of the most influential American philanthropists, art collectors, and public health advocates of
the early 20th century.
She was the daughter of Jeremiah Milbank, a successful banker and co-founder of the Borden Condensed Milk Company. Upon her father's death in 1884, she inherited a vast fortune, which she used independently to champion social reform, women's education, and public welfare.
In 1887, she married artist and rancher Abraham Archibald Anderson. Their daughter, Dr. Eleanor Anderson Campbell, went on to become a physician and philanthropist herself.
Anderson was a major patron of higher education for women, donating the land and funding for Milbank Hall at Barnard College, while also supporting the Spence and Brearley schools.
In 1905, she established the Memorial Foundation (renamed the Milbank Memorial Fund upon her death in 1921), which focused on public health initiatives, tuberculosis eradication, child welfare, and school lunch programs.
While Elizabeth Milbank Anderson was in a traditional heterosexual marriage, she moved within and financed the tight-knit social, artistic, and philanthropic networks formed by New York’s leading same-sex-partnered women—most notably Anne Morgan, Elsie de Wolfe, and Anne Harriman Vanderbilt.
Elsie de Wolfe, widely considered America's first professional interior decorator, lived in a long-term "Boston marriage" with theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury (and later maintained a close circle with Anne Morgan).
Anderson was one of De Wolfe’s key early high-society clients. De Wolfe was hired to decorate Anderson's residences, helping establish De Wolfe's decorating empire and bringing light, 18th-century French aesthetic tastes into Anderson’s extensive art-collecting home.
6 East 38th Street (Manhattan, NYC) was the primary Murray Hill brownstone/townhouse that served as the New York residence for Elizabeth Milbank Anderson and her husband, Abraham Archibald Anderson. De Wolfe decorated the Andersons' Fifth Avenue apartment, applying her signature light, French-inspired 18th-century decorative style and gilt appliqué treatments.
Beyond Anderson's personal homes, she personally commissioned Elsie de Wolfe to decorate the public spaces, parlor, and tea rooms of Brooks Hall—the student residence hall at Barnard College that Anderson funded—styling them after the interiors de Wolfe created for the Colony Club.
Morgan (daughter of J.P. Morgan) and Vanderbilt, along with De Wolfe and Marbury, founded the Colony Club in 1903—New York’s first private social club run by and for women. Anderson was active in these shared philanthropic circles and women's club networks.
Anderson and Anne Harriman Vanderbilt frequently aligned in public health causes, particularly tuberculosis treatment and open-stair sanitary housing projects in Manhattan.
Following Anderson's death in 1921, the same network—led by Anne Vanderbilt, Anne Morgan, and Elisabeth Marbury—transformed the East River waterfront (Sutton Place) into a famous fashion and cultural enclave for independent and queer women of the era.
Elizabeth Milbank Anderson is buried at Putnam Cemetery (35 Parsonage Road, Greenwich, CT) in the Milbank Mausoleum, the primary family burial site for the Milbank family dynasty. The tomb serves as a central resting place for her family line. Her father, Jeremiah Milbank (co-founder of Borden's Milk Company and builder of the family fortune), was originally buried at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn following his death in 1884, but was later reinterred in the Milbank Mausoleum at Putnam Cemetery in 1917. Following Elizabeth Milbank Anderson’s death on February 22, 1921, she was laid to rest inside the mausoleum alongside her family. Other family members, including her daughter, Dr. Eleanor Anderson Campbell (1878–1959), and her granddaughter, Elizabeth Milbank Anderson II (1905–1930), were also interred in the Milbank Mausoleum.
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