Anne Harriman Sands Rutherfurd Vanderbilt 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.
Early life
Anne Harriman was born on February 17, 1861. She was one of eight children born to banker Oliver Harriman and Laura Harriman. Her siblings included Oliver Harriman, Jr. , J. Borden Harriman, and Herbert M. Harriman. Her first cousin, E. H. Harriman, was the father of Governor W. Averell Harriman.
Society life
In 1903, along with Anne Morgan and Elisabeth Marbury, Anne helped organize the Colony Club, the first women's social club in New York. They engaged Stanford White, then New York's most famous architect, to design the interiors of the Club. 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. In 1916, she hosted a fundraiser for the war sufferers of Venice. 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.
Residences
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. 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. Before her move, along with Elizabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan, her sister, Emeline Harriman Olin, second wife of Stephen Henry Olin, the neighborhood was known as a squalid place. Vanderbilt, Marbury, and Morgan each hired Mott B. Schmidt, an American architect best known for his buildings in the American Georgian Classical style, to build, or in Vanderbilt's case, renovate homes in the neighborhood. 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. 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. By January 1929, The Times changed their tune and wrote:
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.
Barbara Cairncross Rutherfurd, who married Cyril Hatch, son of Charles Henry Hatch, in 1916. They had once child, Rutherfurd L. Hatch, before divorcing in 1920. In 1924, she married Winfield Jesse Nicholls, a fellow follower of Oom the Omnipotent. After having two children, Guy Winfield Nicholls and Margaret Mary Nicholls, they divorced in 1930.
Anne died on April 20, 1940. 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.
