Doses of History

The intricate Villa Montezuma in San Diego, California.  I recently returned from vacationing in San Diego, California - an alluring, scenic place that I'd definitely recommend visiting - and while there I saw some truly beautiful architecture. Most of it was modern, I'll admit, but it made me curious about some of the historic homes that were there. When one thinks of the Gilded Age, the city San Diego, or even California in general, most likely doesn't come to mind, since most of the industrial boom and the wealth it created, resulting in the name The Gilded Age , occurred on the East Coast. However, San Diego does have some beautiful residences that were built during the time period. But unlike their North Eastern counterparts, the wealthy who lived in San Diego during the Gilded Age didn't choose to build chateaus and palaces that covered entire city blocks, but rather smaller, more intimate homes with tinier, albeit still very luxurious, entertaining rooms. ...

660 Fifth Avenue, the "Petit Chateau," in 1925.  Completed in 1882, the mansion was built for William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of the famed millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt Sr., "The Commodore," who founded the Vanderbilt family fortune, and his wife Alva. With the intention of using the home to signal her and her family's arrival into New York society, she collaborated with architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a French Renaissance-style townhouse known as the Petit Chateau . Alva Smith Vanderbilt (1853-1933) The home was revolutionary in that, as the time, it was a blotch of bright limestone in comparison to the drab, dingy brownstones surrounding it, including the ornate, enormous triplex across the street occupied by Vanderbilt's father and sisters, and the town house occupied by Mrs. Caroline Astor, the doyenne of New York society, who had refused to acknowledge the Vanderbilt family by calling on them. In response, Alva famously decide...