Virginia Graham Vanderbilt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Fair_Vanderbilt

Virginia Fair Vanderbilt (October 18, 1876 - July 7, 1935) was an American socialite, hotel builder/owner, philanthropist, owner of Fair Stable, a Thoroughbred racehorse operation, and a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family.

Biography

She was born on October 18, 1876 in San Francisco, California as Virginia Graham Fair to James Graham Fair. She was known throughout her life as "Birdie". Her father, James Graham Fair, was an Irish immigrant who made a fortune from mining the Comstock Lode and the Big Bonanza mine in Virginia City and Carson City, Nevada respectively. The United States Senator from Nevada from 1881 to 1887, James Graham Fair died in 1894, leaving his daughter a fortune. In 1899, she and her sister "Tessie" built the Rosecliff mansion in Newport, Rhode Island.

On March 26, 1899, Virginia Graham Fair married William Kissam Vanderbilt II, a sportsman, president of the New York Central Railroad, and great grandson of the redoubtable Cornelius Vanderbilt. They settled in a mansion at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City and had three children: Muriel (1902–1982), Consuelo (1903–2011) and William Kissam III (1907–1933). The couple separated around 1909 but because she was a devout Roman Catholic and they had been married by the Church, they did not formally divorce until 1927 when her husband wanted to remarry.

After their separation, she continued to use the Vanderbilt name but also did much under her maiden name. She began dividing her time between homes in Manhattan, Jericho, Long Island and in her native California. Her mansion at 60 East 93rd Street became the Permanent Mission of Romania to the United Nations then part of the Lycée Français de New York until 2000 when it was sold to be converted back to a private residence.

In 1902, she and sister, Theresa "Tessie" Alice (Fair) Oelrichs, began construction of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco but sold their interests in 1906, days before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. However, following the death of her husband, Tessie Fair-Oelrichs repurchased the property in 1908, retaining ownership until 1924. In 1910, Birdie Vanderbilt set up the Virginia Fair Legacy Fund that rebuilt and endowed the Holy Family Day Home, a Roman Catholic school residence for children in San Francisco that had been damaged by the 1906 earthquake.

Birdie Vanderbilt also spent considerable time in Paris, France where tragedy struck in 1902 when her brother Charles and his wife were killed in an automobile accident. In 1920 her estranged husband, who also maintained a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, inherited the Haras du Quesnay Thoroughbred breeding farm and racing stable near Deauville in France's famous horse region of Lower Normandy. Interested in horse racing herself, Birdie Vanderbilt established her own racing stable in the United States. Named Fair Stable, she met with great success with the Thoroughbred Sarazen who earned back-to-back U.S. Horse of the Year honors in 1924 and 1925 and would be inducted into the United States' National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

In 1933, tragedy struck her family again when her 26-year-old son, William Kissam Vanderbilt III, was killed in an automobile accident in South Carolina while driving home to New York City from his father's Florida estate.

She died in Manhattan from pneumonia on July 15, 1935.

William Kissam Vanderbilt II 1878-1944

William Kissam II, known to friends as “Willie K".

He was educated by tutors, attended St. Mark's Preparatory School, and studied at Harvard. He spent his childhood at the family’s Fifth Avenue mansion, at summer houses in Newport, Marble House, and Long Island, Idle Hour. In the 1920's William and Rosamund Vanderbilt created a spendid winter estate on tropical island Carl Fisher in South Florida. This retreat was named Fisher Island. He was married in 1899 to Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt 1875-1935 known as Birdie, whose father James Graham Fair an Irish immigrant who made $200 million from Nevada's Comstock silver lode, one of the richest silver finds in history. They were the parents of William K. Vanderbilt III, Muriel and Consuelo Vanderbilt. Willie K. was an accomplished sailor and yachtsman, he liked horse racing, motorboats, automobiles and collecting. In 1900 he won the Lipton Cup trophy with his 70-foot yacht Virginia and was presented the award by Sir Thomas Lipton who initiated the races. His yacht were the Hard Boiled Egg and the Eagle.

the legendary 250 foot Eagle yacht swapped in 1925 by William K. Vanderbilt II for Carl Fisher's island

W. K. Vanderbilt Jr.'s auto boat Mercedes VI, won the first race on the Hudson River for the gold Challenge Cup 1904.

In 1904, Willie K. sponsored the first Vanderbilt Cup Race, for motor cars at Long Island. Later he and a group of men formed the Long Island Motor Parkway Corporation and built one of the country's first modern paved parkways. He was an automobile enthusiast in January, 1904 he broke the world's one-mile speed record at Ormond Beach, Fla., covering a mile in just 39 seconds at 92 mph. The Red Devil was only one of several cars Vanderbilt owned in his early days of driving. His first was a Stanley Steamer, purchased in 1899. In 1901, he bought a 33-hp Daimler in Paris that could go 65 mph called the White Ghost, in 1904 he had a white Mercedes.

Motor Racing Vanderbilt Cup

Original cup donated by Willie K Vanderbilt 1904-1905-1906-1908-1909-1910-1911-1912-1914-1915-1916. Revived in 1936 with a new cup donated by George Vanderbilt 1936-1937. A Formula Junior race was held in 1960 with another cup, donated by Cornelius Vanderbilt 1960. CART US 500 gains the rights to the Vanderbilt Cup, 1996-1997-1998-1999. Vanderbilt Cup is now awarded to the CART season champion, replacing the PPG Cup, 2000-201-2002.

The first Vanderbilt Cup started october 8th 1904, on Long Island roads

the Vanderbilt Cup made of Tiffany silver

first international competition for the WILLIAM-K-VANDERBILT-JR-CUP held on Long Island saturday october 8th 1904

and the last in 1916 Santa Monica. The first 300-mile George Vanderbilt Cup race at the new Roosevelt Raceway would be held on October 12, 1936, Columbus Day.

George Vanderbilt, the American multi-millionaire "sponsor" of the race, gives the enormous Vanderbilt Cup to Mantuan that is still on his Alfa Romeo type 12C-36.

He crossed the Atlantic in his father's luxury yacht, and at age 11 had his first ride in a motorcar, a steam-powered three-wheeler, in Monte Carlo. Willie K. went to Harvard, where he joined the yacht club and the polo club, but evidently was not a scholar and he left Cambridge after a year and a half with a certificate of honorable dismissal. In 1917, Vanderbilt was named president of the New York Central, but was always considered something of a figurehead. He attended night classes in navigation at the Merchant Marine School. He served in the Navy during World War I, and was a Lieutenant Commander in the United Naval Reserve. Arriving on Long Island, the Vanderbilts decided to build a country retreat at Lake Success and built a modest, by Vanderbilt standards, colonial-style home on the hilltop at Lake Success and called his new estate Deepdale. An avid collector of natural history specimens, ethnographic objects and other curiosities of exotic cultures, Vanderbilt sailed his yachts the Ara and Alva around the globe on expeditions that yielded a vast array of treasures for his collection, and he left an enduring legacy for all to enjoy in his Centerport estate, now the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum. In 1910, he began work on the “Eagle’s Nest” estate, a spanish revival style mansion on 43 wooded acres overlooking Northport Harbor, the property contrasted in scale with "Deepdale", Great Neck, Long Island, NY, built in 1902. In september 1927 Willie K. and Rosamund Lancaster Warburton, of Philadelphia, were married in a civil cermony at the mayors office in Paris. The official witness was his step-mother Anne, and the mother of the bride. Rosamund was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in May 1897 to John Edward Lancaster and his wife, the former Agnes Maria Fanning. In 1919 she was married at Elkton, MD to Barclay Harding Warburton, Jr. son of Warburton and his wife, Mary Brown Wanamaker, daughter of the department store founder John Wanamaker, of Philadelphia. The Warburtons, who had two children, Rosemary, who married William C.T. Gaynor, M.D. and had a child, and Barkley III, who married twice and who died in 1988 were divorced the year before her marriage to Willie K.

A Memorial Wing was constructed in 1935 in memory of his son, William K. Vanderbilt III, who had died in an auto accident in 1933 on a highway in South Carolina. William K. Vanderbilt III was returning to New York from his father's Florida estate when his car hit a fruit truck parked on the roadside. He was 26 years old. Vanderbilt, built a new wing to Eagle's Nest to commemorate his son, calling it Memorial Wing. It housed stuffed trophies from his son's recent hunting trips in the Sudan and a huge mural depicting young Vanderbilt on safari. In the 1930s Willie K. opened the estate to the public several days a week.

The fortune had dwindled by the time William K. Vanderbilt II died in 1944. The Fifth Avenue mansions built by his parents had been sold and wrecked. And none of the Vanderbilts could afford to live in any of the great estates that their parents and grandparents had built. Willie K. owned a hunting lodge and preserve in Canada, a farm in Tennessee, a place at Fisher's Island in Florida (complete with seaplane hangar, docking facilities, an eleven hole golf course, each hole being named after one of his yachts, tennis courts, swimming pool, etc.), and the summer estate at Centerport, "Eagle's Nest." Willie K. died in early 1944 of a heart ailment and was laid to rest in the Moravian Cemetery Staten Island Richmond County New York. Rosamund died three years later, and Eagle's Nest along with a $2,000,000 fund for its perpetuation, was left to Suffolk County, Long Island