the houses railroads built

1. Lyndhurst • Tarrytown, N.Y.2. Biltmore House & Gardens • Asheville, N.C.3. Marble House • Newport, R.I.4. Asa Packer Mansion Museum • Jim Thorpe, Pa.5. Glen Eyrie Castle & Conference Center • Colorado Springs, Colo.6. Leland Stanford Mansion • Sacramento, Calif.7. Vanderbilt Mansion Historic Site • Hyde Park, N.Y.8. Flagler Museum • Palm Beach, Fla.9. Cuneo Mansion & Gardens • Vernon Hills, Ill. 10. James J. Hill House • St. Paul, Minn.

2

7

8

6

1049 1

3

5

44 Trains SEPTEMBER 2014 www.TrainsMag.com 45

They may not be as large or as old as Highclere Castle of “Downton Ab-bey” fame (with too many rooms for the owners to count), but the

great houses built by American aristocracy roughly between the end of the Civil War and the early 1900s come close to that Eng-lish mansion’s magnificence. It was an era of great technological and economic advances, one in which the industrialists and capital-ists acquired such massive wealth that Mark Twain called it “The Gilded Age.”

Not only was it the age of making mon-ey, but spending it in abundance was de ri-gueur as a mark of taste and social status. Andrew Carnegie wrote that homes of the wealthy should display “all the refinements

of civilization.” The rich enthusiastically sub-scribed to that creed, building multiple mansions with all the trappings of wealth: tons of marble, gold gilding, carved paneling and plaster, coffered ceilings, pastoral mu-rals, tapestries, art and antiques, statuary, fountains, and lush landscapes.

Not the least among the rich and famous were the powerful men who built railroad empires, including the Vanderbilts (New York Central), who started with Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt’s biggest-in-America fortune and made it bigger. Henry Flagler (Florida East Coast) made one for-tune as a founder of the Standard Oil Co., and then turned his attention to developing hotels and railroads in Florida.

James J. Hill (Great Northern), often called the Empire Builder, made history by pushing his railroad west across the coun-try’s northern tier and bringing transporta-tion and commerce to small towns along the way. Traction magnate Samuel Insull (Chi-cago North Shore & Milwaukee and the Chicago South Shore & South Bend), who started his career as Thomas Edison’s private secretary, branched out in Chicago to create the Commonwealth Edison utility and a dense network of electric railroads.

The railroads they built changed the eco-nomic landscape, providing a means of shipping raw materials to distant manufac-turers, opening markets for goods and agri-cultural products, and delivering thousands

of immigrant workers to farms and factories across the nation. In the process, the owners acquired great wealth and spared no ex-pense building houses to reflect their status.

They looked to England and the Euro-pean continent for architectural and design standards and to American ingenuity for the latest technological advances, such as electric lights, indoor plumbing, and cen-tral heat. The cost of building and main-taining these monuments to wealth is mind-boggling. It’s no wonder that after the Depression, these palaces were nearly impossible to sell, in part because of the upkeep, but also because lavish living was not in vogue for a nation on the verge of war. Many were torn down, with the land

broken into smaller parcels for develop-ment. But several houses built or bought with railroad money are now historic land-marks that are open to the public.

The houses featured here are historical and social reminders, not only of the opu-lent excesses of the times, but also the deep chasm between the rich and the poor in an era when railroads held sway over the American economy. Yet they stand as cul-tural artifacts that reflect the art and artistry, craftsmanship and beauty of a bygone era.

ELFRIEDA ABBE is a freelance writer in Milwaukee and a former Kalmbach Publish-ing Co. editor whose final position in the com-pany was that of publisher of Trains.

by Elfrieda Abbe

Railroad barons and their Gilded Age mansions

The houses railroads built

Our tour of famous railroad mansions starts with Whitehall in Palm Beach, Fla. The 75-room home belonged to Florida East Coast founder Henry M. Flagler. Whitehall


A railroad man through-and-through, the seri-ous-minded Frederick Vanderbilt liked to work. He had “graduated from every single department of the New York Central,” according to biographers.

The only one in his family to have graduated from college (Yale), he was director of the railroad for 61 years and served on the board of 22 other lines, including the Chicago & North Western. By the time he died, he had increased his $10 million inheritance to $77 million. In The Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age: Architectural Aspirations, 1879-1901, John Foreman and Robbe Pierce Stimson wrote that Vanderbilt’s neighbor, Franklin D. Roos-evelt, was said to have joked, “Fred’s pockets jin-gled every time the New York Central train ran be-low his Hyde Park mansion.”

Once over the entrance bridge to Frederick and Louise (Holmes Anthony Torrance) Vanderbilt’s estate in Hyde Park, N.Y., visitors drive through a park-like setting to reach the imposing three-story, 54-room Beaux-Arts mansion with fluted columns, carved Corinthian capitals, and stately porticos on each façade. Standing in front of the entrance, a

visitor might feel positively Lilliputian. But the scale and grandeur of the Vanderbilts’ country re-treat suits the surrounding landscape high above the Hudson River with a panoramic view of the Catskills. It’s easy to see why the Vanderbilts chose this site.

They bought the property with an existing house and then hired the prestigious architectural firm McKim, Mead, & White to expand it; ironically, the same firm would in 1910 design New York’s Pennsylvania Station for NYC archrival Pennsylva-nia Railroad. Construction began in 1896, and as often happens with renovations, once the work started the contractor found an unpleasant sur-prise. Laden with structural flaws, the house was beyond repair. The couple decided to tear it down and build a larger house.

The new house and its furnishings cost $2.25 million. Frederick and Louise, who owned four oth-er properties, including a New York City town-home, used the Hyde Park mansion for six-week periods during the spring and fall seasons and during the holidays. Foreman and Stimson wrote

that while in residence, the couple filled the role of landed gentry, with New Year’s parties, river cruis-es, and picnics for the surrounding communities.

The estate employed 60 people full-time, in-cluding the house staff, groundskeepers, and farm hands who tended Jersey cows, Belgian horses, and leghorn chickens that provided enough milk, eggs, and poultry for everyone who worked on the estate. NYC trains stopped at the family’s private station, especially convenient for Frederick, who could get on the train a few feet from his door and commute to his office near Grand Central Terminal. Twice a week, the train carried flowers from the estate’s greenhouses to the couple’s city house. Twice a year, the trains transported Vanderbilt’s horses between the city and the country.

After Louise died in 1926 and Frederick in 1938, Louise’s niece, Margaret Van Alen inherited the property. She hoped to sell the house and fur-nishings to someone who would live in it, but as Foreman and Stimson wrote, the Beaux-Arts style was considered “sterile and irrelevant.” After failing to sell the property for a reduced price of $250,000, Van Alen, with the encour-agement and help of President Roosevelt, donated it to the Na-tional Park Service.

The house remains to-day much as it did when the Vanderbilts lived there. Guided walking tours of most of the rooms take an hour. The estate features a terraced gar-den landscape with fountains, reflecting pools and statues. Visitors can explore three miles of hiking trails, including a river walk. Alas, the trails do not reach what is today Amtrak’s main line to Albany.

When designing Henry Morrison Flagler’s win-ter retreat, Whitehall, architects John Carrère and Thomas Hastings had in mind a temple to Apollo. As pretentious as that sounds now, the Flaglers of the day looked to ancient civilizations as proto-types for American ideals.

It was also a time when Flagler focused his business acumen on Florida. He consolidated

small railroads to create the Florida East Coast, opening up the state for tourism. Through his rail-road and hotel enterprises, he was a major con-tributor to the development of Miami and other communities in Florida, investing in infrastructure, such as sewers, paved streets, and waterworks, and founding the Florida Power & Light Co. to serve the region. Perhaps his most dramatic achievement, known as “Flagler’s Folly,” was the 156-mile extension to Key West. Much of it was built over water and marshland, requiring steel and con-crete bridges. It was competed in 1912, the year before Flagler died at the age of 83. Barely two decades later, during the great Labor Day hur-ricane of 1935, most of the Key West extension was wiped out. FEC retreated to the mainland.

During his period of business ex-pansion, Flagler commissioned archi-tects Carrère and Hastings to build the 75-room Beaux-Arts mansion in Palm Beach as a wedding gift for his third wife, Mary Lily Ke-nan. Flagler made adjustments to the original de-sign, says David Carson, the museum’s public af-fairs director. He insisted on lowering the “Grand Hall ceiling by 8 feet from the original plans to give the large room a more intimate feeling — if

you can make a room of almost 5,000 square feet intimate.”

When the house was completed in 1902, the New York Herald effused that it was “more wonderful than any palace in Europe, grander and more magnificent than any private dwelling in the world.”

After Flagler’s death, his wife Mary Lily inherit-ed the estate. She lived only a few more years,

leaving Whitehall to her niece, who sold it to an investment group in 1925. Fortunately, rather than tear-ing it down, the investors used the original rooms as lounges, card rooms, and guest suites for the ad-joining 10-story, 300-room hotel. In 1959, after the hotel — but not the mansion — was razed, Flagler’s granddaughter, Jean Flagler Mat-thews, purchased the property and began to restore Whitehall, which be-came a museum in 1960.

Today’s docent-led tours include 11 rooms on the first floor, or you can take an audio tour of 23 rooms. The Flagler Kenan Pavilion near the mansion houses Flagler’s private car No. 91, built in 1886 by Jackson & Sharp. The Pavilion it-self was built in the style of railway stations in the Gilded Age.

Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic SiteFlagler Museum

The Florida East Coast’s 156-mile Key West extension, also known as “Flagler’s Folly,” was an audacious feat of railroading ingenuity and bravado. Completed in 1912, the year before Flagler died, it lasted only until 1935, when a hurricane swept it away. FEC

The Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt mansion in Hyde Park, N.Y., was only steps away from the New York Central main line, thus providing the head of the railroad with easy access to his trains. Among the neighbors: Franklin D. Roosevelt. National Park Service

Henry Flagler Frederick Vanderbilt

Flagler’s private car, an 1886 Jackson & Sharp product, is displayed in a building designed like Gilded Age railway stations. Flagler Museum

New York Central’s train, the Missourian, rolls south along the Hudson River at Hyde Park, N.Y. The date is August 1948, 10 years after Frederick Vanderbilt’s death. R.E. Tobey

© 2014 Kalmbach Publishing Co. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. www.TrainsMag.com


When he was 17 years old, James J. Hill set out to seek his fortune, immigrating from Ontario, Canada, to St. Paul, Minn., already a transportation center on the Mississippi River. From his modest beginnings as a shipping

clerk, he went on to make a fortune storing and shipping wood, coal, wheat, and copper, and by building the Great Northern Railway to carry freight and passengers across the northern most states west of Minneapolis.

This smart, hard-working visionary was generally described as a difficult man who you wouldn’t want as your enemy. In Hill’s 1916 obituary, The New York Times called him a “natural pile-driver of a man, slow and deliber-ate to rise, but swift and crushing in the downward stroke.”

These qualities contributed mightily to his success in building railroads, and his genius for business kept the GN running after all the other transcontinental lines had gone bankrupt.

Not to be outdone by Eastern counterparts like the Vanderbilts, J. Pierpont Morgan, and William Rockefeller, Hill wanted to showcase his wealth. In the late 1880s, he was ready for a monumental dwelling, one that also would ex-hibit his growing art collection. He purchased lots on St. Paul’s desirable Summit Avenue as the site for a new home.

Architects, interior designers, and crafts-men soon discovered what his railroad associ-ates knew. Hill was “ the hardest man to work for ... intolerant of opposition, despotic, largely ruling by fear,’” according to Mathew Josephson in The Robber Barons.

In an article for the Minnesota Historical So-ciety, historian Barbara Ann Caron describes a

parade of architects who worked for Hill. He first hired Henry O. Avery of New York City, who drew up plans for a French Gothic-style house that Hill rejected outright. He fired Avery and moved on to the Boston firm of Peabody and Sterns. The firm submitted two sets of draw-ings — “old time English” and French chateau styles — before Hill finally accepted a Roman-esque plan, “characterized by dark, rough-hewn stonewalls and heavy arches.”

The solid, monumental, fortress-like style was particularly popular in the Midwest. Seven other Romanesque dwellings were built on Sum-mit Avenue around the same time as the Hill House, according to Caron. She surmises that his affinity for the architecture may have come from the Great Northern’s famous Stone Arch Bridge, which spanned the Mississippi River at Minneapolis and resembled a Roman viaduct. The bridge remains today, but without tracks and is a famous urban walking trail.

Construction of the house started in 1888, but Hill suddenly fired Peabody and Sterns the following year for “countermanding orders about stone carvings,” Caron writes. Subse-quently, Hill rejected many proposals to finish the job, including one from Tiffany & Co. He went on to hire Irving & Casson, a noted interior design firm from Boston.

Finished in 1891, the three-story house in-cluded 22 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms and a 1,500-square-foot art gallery for Hill’s extensive collection of landscape paintings. The interior has fine examples of craftsmanship and atten-tion to detail, including intricately carved oak and mahogany woodwork, columns, and pilas-

ters. In addition, it was outfitted with the latest technological advances in gas and electric light-ing, central heating, ventilation, plumbing, and communication and security systems. (Hill in-stalled grates and locks on all the basement and first-floor doors and windows.)

The Hill house, furnishings, land, grounds, and other buildings, including “a conservatory,

power plant and mushroom cave,” cost $930,000 (more than $23 million today), ac-cording to the Minnesota Historical Society, which now owns the house. Historian Vincent Scully called the house a “superb example of upper-class residential architecture.” But other critics called it “intimidating” and “unattractive.” Alas, it is almost empty of furniture.

Marble House • Newport, R.I.Built between 1888 and 1892, Marble House was a gift from Wil-liam K. Vanderbilt to his wife, Alva, on her 39th birthday. Designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the mansion lives up to its name with 500,000 cubic feet of marble used in its construction, including a pink marble dining room setting. Vanderbilt, who managed New York Central for a time, later turned his atten-tion to yachting and horse racing. Marble House is managed by The Preser-vation Society of Newport County. www.newportmansions.org

Leland Stanford Mansion • Sacramento, Calif.In 1861, Leland Stanford bought the Renaissance Revival-style mansion, built between 1856 and 1857. Stanford, who was elected governor in 1862, expanded the mansion to 19,000 square feet. President of the Cen-tral Pacific Railroad, Stanford joined Collis P. Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins as one of the “Big Four” who raced to build the first transcontinental railroad. When Central Pacific and Union Pacific locomo-tives faced each other on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Stanford swung a silver hammer to drive in the golden spike. (He missed.) Stanford and his wife, Jane, founded Stanford University in memory of their son, who died when he was 16. After several incarnations, including a settlement house and a school for girls, the house, which had fallen into disrepair, was restored in 2005 by California State Parks. It includes many original furnish-ings and architectural features. For tour information visit this website: www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=489

Biltmore House & Gardens • Asheville, N.C.George Vanderbilt didn’t work for the family business (New York Central), but its money allowed him to build America’s largest house, the 250-room Biltmore in Asheville, N.C. It even had its own construction rail-road leading from the nearby Southern Railway yard. www.biltmore.com

Asa Packer Mansion Museum • Jim Thorpe, Pa.Built by philanthropist, railroad magnate (Lehigh Valley Railroad) and Lehigh University founder Asa Packer, the Victorian Italianate mansion overlooks Jim Thorpe, Pa., formerly Mauch Chunk. It was designed by Phil-adelphia architect Samuel Sloan. Completed in 1861, the three-story, 18-room house with a red tin roof and gingerbread trim is a small but not trivi-al cousin to Gilded Age mansions. It has its share of carved woodwork and stained glass, plus a cupola with a great view. The museum stresses that the house is not “restored” but preserved, just as it was when the Packers lived there. Therein lies its unique charm. As a wedding gift to his son, Harry, Packer built a mansion on a much grander scale next door, which is now an inn. www.asapackermansion.com

Glen Eyrie Castle & Conference Center Colorado Springs, Colo.Civil War hero Gen. William Jackson Palmer built his 67-room Tudor mansion in the foothills near the Rocky Mountains. He was the engi-neer in charge of building the Kansas Pacific Railway from Kansas City, Kan., to Denver and later founded the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad of both narrow gauge and standard gauge fame in the Rockies. Credited with transforming Colorado Springs from a rough frontier town to a tour-ist destination, he hired architect Frederick Sterner to design the house, but remained quite involved in the construction. He went so far as to buy a church in England to obtain the roofing tiles, the Westside Pioneer newspaper reported. Now owned by The Navigators, a Christian organiza-tion, the house serves as a conference center for Christian events, wed-dings and retreats. www.gleneyrie.org

Lyndhurst • Tarrytown, N.Y.Jay Gould, who was vilified for a scheme to corner the gold market that led to the “Black Friday” panic of 1869, went on to build one of the largest railroad empires in the nation with more than 10,000 miles of track under his control. His principal corporate affiliations included the Erie, Missouri Pacific, and Union Pacific railroads. He also controlled tele-gram giant Western Union and elevated railways in New York City. Consid-ered Machiavellian in business, Gould’s softer side emerged at his 400-acre estate Lyndhurst, where he doted on his family and raised orchids. www.lyndhurst.org

More mansions

James J. Hill House

Railroad money paid to build America’s largest private residence, Biltmore House in Western North Carolina near Asheville. Biltmore

Jay Gould’s mansion, Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, N.Y., was part of a 400-acre estate where the millionaire raised orchids. Lyndhurst

Empire Builder James J. Hill’s house in St. Paul, Minn., is an impressive home. The Minnesota Historical Society preserves it, but sadly, it is devoid of most furniture. Steve Glischinski

Note the similarities between Great Northern’s famous Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis and James J. Hill’s mansion. It’s believed that Hill drew on the bridge for inspiration GN

James J. Hill


Modest by Vanderbilt standards, Samuel Insull’s 32-room Italianate villa, finished in 1917, makes up for size with its exquisite beauty and hu-man scale. Chicago architect Benjamin Marshall emulated in meticulous detail the Mediterranean palaces that Insull so admired, including an open-air, two-story central courtyard surrounded by low-er and upper loggias with Corinthian, Ionic, and Doric columns on both floors. Its striking pink ex-terior, which critics found garish, is reminiscent of a sunnier clime than that of the Upper Midwest.

The British-born Insull built an expansive utili-ties empire and great wealth in the Chicago area. In The Merchant of Power: Samuel Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropo-lis, author John F. Wasik describes how the 5-foot-3 “whippet-thin” Insull arrived from England in 1881 to take a job at Edison’s New York City of-fice for $100 a month. Later, in Chicago, he ac-quired Commonwealth Edison, Peoples Gas, and the Chicago Rapid Transit Co. His rail holdings consisted of several interurban traction lines, in-cluding the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee Railroad, the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad, and the Chicago Aurora & Elgin Railroad,

all of which existed largely to bring commuters to the city. At the height of his success, Insull was estimated to be worth about $100 million.

Celebrated for his philanthropy, the electricity czar, who married rising theater star Gladys Wallis, had a strong interest in the arts, especially opera. He built the Chicago Civic Op-era House in 1929. In suburban Lib-ertyville, he built a school and helped build a hospital.

Despite his philanthropic activi-ties, Insull rose to Jay Gould-level in-famy when his stock manipulations wiped out the savings of small inves-tors. He “aroused strong feelings, ei-ther positive or negative,” writes John B. Byrne in “Cuneo Museum and Gardens,” a book in Arcadia Pub-lishing’s “Images of America” series.

Insull lost most of his fortune during the Great Depression, but was charged with mail fraud, violating bankruptcy laws, and embezzle-ment. He fled the country but eventually was forced back for trial. Though acquitted of all charges, he never regained his reputation and

died broke in a Paris Metro station in 1938. Along with Edison, Insull was responsible for

bringing electricity into American homes, yet he remains relatively unknown. Still, his influence is felt every time we turn on a light, or every time thousands of commuters ride the last vestige of

his interurban empire, the South Shore Line passenger service, which is now run by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District.

Wisek reported that this power-ful, defamed mogul served as an inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, the anti-hero of the 1941 Oscar-winning film, Citizen Kane. Long thought to be based on William Randolph Hearst, Kane was actually a composite of Insull, Hearst, and Chicago Tribune owner Col. Robert

R. McCormick. Wisek noted that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz “worked Insull’s opera house project into the screenplay as Kane’s ob-session with buying operatic venues for his mis-tress” and director Orson Welles “instructed his makeup artists to make the actor look like a

photograph of Insull from the 1930s.” One of Insull’s greatest regrets was the loss

of his mansion and farmland in 1932. John Cu-neo, owner of a Chicago-area dairy and founder of Cuneo Press, bought the house in 1937. It re-mained in Cuneo family hands until 2009, when John Cuneo Jr. donated the land and house to Loyola University. The Cuneos favored a more op-ulent interior than the Insulls, and today the house is decorated with European antiques, paintings, tapestries, sculpture, and gold-gilded bathroom walls. The Cuneos added murals in the ceiling, lunette windows, and a private chapel.

As you might expect from the head of Com-monwealth Edison, Insull outfitted his house with the latest electrical inventions. He installed a re-tractable glass ceiling above the reception hall, which, when open, was more truly like an open Italian villa, complete with a fountain and green-ery. Cuneo sealed the ceiling and furnished the hall as it is today, with European antiques and art. Other electrical features included a central vacu-um-cleaning system and an electric clothes dryer. The original electrical wiring was used in the house until 2010. 2

Cuneo Mansion & Gardens

British-born traction magnate Samuel Insull built this Italianate villa at Libertyville, Ill. Constructed in 1917, it was sold in 1937 to John Cuneo. It remained in the Cuneo family until 2009, when it was donated to Loyola University. Chris Guss

Samuel Insull’s control of Chicago-area railroads included the legendary Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee. In this 1949 scene at Racine, Wis., a northbound train of five cars pauses at the depot before continuing to Oak Creek and Milwaukee. Robert A. Hadley

Samuel Insull

Chicago Aurora & Elgin was one of Insull’s Chicago-area interurban railroads that moved commuters and freight. Two boxcabs work on July 17, 1955. Will iam D. Middleton

the houses railroads built

Documents