# @newport.mansions on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnh8UMEvnWA
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/71766778-newportmansions-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/cb29de3fd7.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-01-17T20:51:49.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Newport Mansions (@newport.mansions) — https://gondola.cc/newport.mansions

## Caption

Alva Erskine Smith was born on this date in 1853 in Mobile, Alabama. She was Alva Vanderbilt during her 20-year marriage to William Kissam Vanderbilt, and Alva Belmont after marrying Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont.

To say Alva was deeply involved in the design of Marble House is an understatement. But Marble House was not her first close collaboration with architect Richard Morris Hunt. That was the original Idle Hour in Suffolk County, New York, completed in 1879.

Designed in the “Stick Style” then fashionable, Idle Hour was a country getaway for the family. Daughter Consuelo described it as "a rambling frame house close to a river; green lawns swept away to the gardens, stables, woods, and farms. Here we crabbed and fished in the river and learned to sail a boat.”

The estate was used by Consuelo and her brother William Jr. for their honeymoons. During William’s honeymoon with his bride, Virginia, in April 1899, a fire burned the wooden house to the ground.

Photo: Alva Vanderbilt, portrait by Benjamin Curtis Porter circa 1879
Photo 2: The original Idle Hour on Long Island, N.Y.

#newportmansions #gildedage #gildedagenewyork #vanderbilt #alva #newport #marblehouse #belmont

## Stats

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## Tags

belmont, marblehouse, newportmansions, vanderbilt, newport, gildedagenewyork, gildedage, alva

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