Sunday, we woke up and had breakfast, and then headed down to the Vanderbilt mansion. While I wasn’t terribly impressed by the exterior architecture, it was quite lovely inside. Apparently, this Vanderbilt was mostly conservative, and this was the cheapest of the family’s mansions. Given that at most he’d host only a few guest, it was certainly large enough and quite well done. At the end of his life he lived there alone, along with his forty servants. In fact, when he died, he left much of his fortune to his former servants. This was the Gilded Era with all of the super rich families competing to see who can be more opulent. Indeed there was much money here, but you also got the impression that at least with this Vanderbilt, it was about making money, and not spending it. Maybe this is why that when he died, his fortune was greater than the rest of the Vanderbilts combined.