Marble House

Rhode Island

Alva Vanderbilt got this fifty-room marble palace as a birthday present, and later used its lawn for women's suffrage rallies.

historicalculturepeople

The marble palace on Bellevue Avenue was a birthday present. Alva Vanderbilt received it outright from her husband William on her thirty-ninth birthday, which meant that when she divorced him in 1895, the house was already hers. She remarried the next year and moved down the street to her new husband's mansion. After he died, she came back. She built a Chinese Tea House on the cliff above the ocean, and there, in the shadow of one of the most expensive private homes ever built in America, she hosted rallies for women's suffrage. She closed the place for good in 1919 and left for France, dividing her time between Paris, the Riviera, and a chateau she restored. She sold the house in 1932, less than a year before she died. The portico out front has been compared to the one on the White House.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
When Alva Vanderbilt divorced William in 1895, she already owned Marble House outright, having received it as her 39th birthday present.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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