Could you survive in the vicious Gilded Age? Here are the original influencer's secrets to success

The decades after the American Civil War were dubbed the Gilded Age, a phrase often attributed to author Mark Twain, who used it to describe how the new sheen of dazzling wealth was riddled with deep layers of inequality and corruption beneath. Industrial fortunes from railroads, shipping, oil and steel had given rise to a new class of millionaires who built marble mansions and entertained on a scale that rivalled European royalty.

Yet money alone was not enough to enter the closely guarded circle of New York’s social elites. For generations, families of Dutch and English descent, the so-called Knickerbockers, had guarded their standing. Their arbiter was Caroline Astor. She curated the guest list of high society’s events and drew a rigid line between those deemed acceptable and those of new money, clawing for entry. The measure of true belonging was being on her famous list of ‘Four Hundred,’ supposedly the number of people who could fit in her ballroom.

It was into this highly stratified world, defined by exclusion and extravagance, that Alva Vanderbilt arrived. Backed by one of the largest fortunes in America but lacking the social pedigree Mrs Astor demanded, Alva fought ruthlessly to climb the ladder and became the ultimate social influencer along the way.

“She wanted to be an influencer of the Gilded Age,” explains historian Professor Nancy Unger, chair of the history department at Santa Clara University, on the HistoryExtra podcast. “She met resistance from this old-school Astor family contingent. But two things were in her favour. She was incredibly wealthy, and she’s just determined to make this happen. She wasn’t waiting to be accepted.”

Rebellious roots in the American South

Alva Erskine Smith was born in 1853 in Mobile, Alabama, into a well-to-do cotton-trading family. Her childhood unfolded in the deeply unequal world of the slaveholding South.

“Growing up as a child, she was very open about the fact that she would just terrorise the enslaved children,” says Unger. “[Alva] said, ‘It was a case of absolute control on my part.’” That was perhaps the first indication of her dominant personality, and her lack of care for other individuals.

Even as a young girl she fiercely resisted constraint, imposing herself on those around her and defying what was expected. “She fought against authority. She fought against her governance. She slapped her piano teacher … She said she’d rather be a rebel than a victim,” Unger notes.

Just before the Civil War broke out, her family left Alabama for New York, bringing enslaved servants with them. It was a rare relocation: Southerners were not always welcomed in Union territory, but the Smiths’ wealth gave them a foothold. Alva’s upbringing had combined privilege, defiance and cruelty, traits that keenly foreshadowed her life in New York.

A calculated marriage into the Vanderbilt millions

By the 1870s, Alva was a vivacious young woman educated in Paris, fluent in French culture and admired for her dark red hair and poise. But what she lacked was great family wealth: the Smiths’ finances had declined during and after the war.

She therefore looked to marriage, and set her sights on William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt. The Commodore had hauled himself from a career as a ferry operator to a shipping and railroad magnate, amassing more than $100m by the time of his death in 1877. Though ‘new money’ by Knickerbocker standards, the Vanderbilt family was financially gargantuan.

• Read more | Inside the real Vanderbilt divorces that rocked the Gilded Age

“You never get the sense that she was madly in love with this guy [William], but she’s certainly interested in his money and his social status. She was motivated by the fact that her family’s finances were in decline, and this was going to be good for her, and good for the family,” Unger explains.

Alva’s marriage to the Commodore’s grandson in 1875 secured her a platform: access to Vanderbilt millions and a place in the battle between the old and new elites of New York society.

Stone and scandal

Alva quickly saw that New York’s elite measured power and taste through status symbols.

Brownstone townhouses on Fifth Avenue symbolised respectability, but to her they seemed dowdy. Now bolstered by her Vanderbilt heft, she partnered with architect Richard Morris Hunt in 1878, the first American trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, to build residences that rivalled European palaces.

“She begins to challenge convention with a vengeance. She partnered up with Richard Morris Hunt, and they started to design buildings together, [because] she says: ‘These brownstone houses that all the elite live in are ugly,’” Unger says.

Her most famous project, the Petite Chateau at 660 Fifth Avenue in midtown Manhattan, broke with tradition through its French Renaissance style and extravagant interiors. In 1883 she used the new mansion to host a masquerade ball for 1,200 guests, costing an estimated over $7m in today’s money. The event dominated the press, with elaborate costumes, jewels and tableaux that left even Mrs Astor with no choice but to attend.

The ball symbolised a turning point: Alva had forced the Vanderbilts into society’s inner circle not through deference, but through setting new trends with a dazzling force of will.

Playing marriage like chess

Once she had secured her own place in society, Alva used her children as pieces in her ongoing game of social strategy, and the moves she made gave insight into her passion for female empowerment.

“Her ambitions for the sons were pretty standard, [but] where she really pinned her hopes was with her daughter, Consuelo,” Unger explains.

“She said she wants the very best for her daughter, and if her daughter married an American man, she thought she’ll just end up being the wife and nothing more.

“So Alva Vanderbilt says, ‘No, I want better for my daughter. She must marry an aristocrat.’ She thought that only in aristocratic Europe could women really have power and control, and that’s what she wanted for her daughter.”

Unger continues, “And so Alva proceeded in this ruthless campaign, like a business merger. She was just adamant that this was going to happen. And poor Consuelo was like a prisoner in her own house.”

• Read more | Who were the tycoons of the Gilded Age? Meet the ruthless 'robber barons' who made millions

As ever, Alva got her way, despite her daughter’s unwillingness. Consuelo Vanderbilt’s 1895 marriage to Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, epitomised the ‘dollar princess’ phenomenon. Dozens of American heiresses married into European aristocracy in the late 19th century, bringing vast dowries in exchange for ancient titles.

For Alva, the Marlborough match was a coup: it placed her family on the world stage, aligning Vanderbilt wealth with Churchill prestige.

Her own marriage fared less well. William Kissam Vanderbilt’s infidelities gave Alva grounds for divorce, which was a shocking move in elite circles. “She’s very famous for divorcing her husband on charges of adultery, which was simply not done in the upper classes. She said, ‘I don’t think society will fall if I divorce my husband for adultery. And I think more women should be doing that,’” says Unger.

Any other woman might have expected scorn to be heaped upon her by society, and to be shunned. But Alva’s fortune, fame and international alliances shielded her from the social consequences.

From society queen to suffrage powerhouse

By the early 20th century, Alva had transformed from social schemer to political activist.

Following her divorce in 1895, she remarried, and once her second husband died, she redirected her fortune into women’s rights.

“She had a final act where she devoted herself and her considerable fortune to getting American women the vote and to promoting what we would call today a feminist agenda,” Unger explains.

“She said women should have the vote because we’re equal, and we should have not just the vote, but equal legal rights. She took up with some of the more militant branch of the American women’s suffrage movement.”

• Read more | Suffragettes history facts: 10 things you might not know about the Votes for Women campaigners

Her wealth bankrolled rallies, publications and national campaigns. Crucially, she insisted that feminism include not only society women but also working-class women and women of colour. This broader vision set her apart from many white suffragists of her day, whose campaigns often excluded marginalised groups.

“She really championed these women,” says Unger, while recognising that Alva’s broader political principles weren’t aligned with her personal actions. “All of her own servants hated her because she was so demanding, so unsympathetic. She’ll slap servants and she was just absolutely awful to them. So, she's this really weird mix.”

A woman of dazzling contradictions

Alva Vanderbilt was difficult, domineering and often ruthless. She could be brutal to servants, unyielding with family and unapologetically selfish. “Is she a really difficult, obstinate, stubborn, selfish woman? Yes she is,” says Unger. “But does she make real change and, in many ways, positive change? Yes.”

The Gilded Age was an era of contradictions, and few embodied those contradictions more than Alva Vanderbilt. She forced her daughter into a loveless marriage but championed women’s rights; she built palaces to prove a point but used her fortune to finance political causes.

Above all, she understood the power of image as a tool of influence. A century later, her career feels uncannily modern. Alva Vanderbilt was the architect of her own mighty reputation and a manipulator of public attention. She was, perhaps, one of the original influencers.

Nancy Unger was speaking to Elinor Evans on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.

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