# data[].attributes.body
The Vanderbilts were some of the richest. They had built many huge houses, but only 1 house still remains.

# data[].attributes.body
Cornelius Vanderbilt, was a self made. He would succeed at all cost. And was not a great father or husband.

# data[].attributes.body
The Vanderbilts created there fortune by the burgeoning railroad and shipping industries. They successfully navigated business and understood their trade like nobody else.

# data[].attributes.body
The university was chartered in 1872 as Central University by the Southern branch of the Methodist Episcopal church. When shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt donated $1,000,000 in 1873, the school was founded as Vanderbilt University, and classes began two years later.

# data[].attributes.body
William Henry Vanderbilt American railroad magnate and philanthropist who nearly doubled the Vanderbilt family fortune established and in large part bequeathed to him by his father, Cornelius.

# data[].attributes.body
Born in Mobile, Alabama Alva Eskine Smith became one of the world's wealthiest women upon marriage to William Kissam Vanderbilt. Socially ambitious as a young woman, she devoted her energy to raising the “new money” Vanderbilt family to prominence in New York Society.

# data[].attributes.body
An Alabama native like her cousin Amelia, Frank Armstrong Crawford married Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1869. He was seventy-five and she was thirty. Strongly devoted to the Methodist Church, her letters to McTyeire suggest that Frank played a critical role in priming Cornelius to sponsor a Southern Methodist institution.

# data[].attributes.body
So Alva decided to throw a costume ball so grand for her then-six-year-old daughter, Consuelo, that not even Mrs. Astor could refuse its invitation. She spent outrageously.

# data[].attributes.body
Newport Vanderbilt

# data[].attributes.body
Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt was the son of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the grandson of William Henry Vanderbilt and the great grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. His mother was Alice Claypoole Gwynne, from whom he received his second name.

# data[].attributes.body
As the family inheritance was dispersed between more and more descendants, New York Central was undergoing changes. The transport business had peaked in late 1920s, but freight soon declined and by the end of World War II trucks, barges, airplanes and buses had cut into its industry.

# data[].attributes.body
The Gilded Age's Vanderbilt family was considered a new-money family because, unlike the old-money families, the Vanderbilts were not prominent before the American Revolution

# data[].attributes.body
Biltmore house, America's Largest Home spanning 175,000 square feet, which is more than four acres of floor space.