Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, arbiter elegantiarum, and her Gothic salon at Newport, Rhode Island

lari musawi mujtaba sayyid;

Faced with the architectural ambition and generous resources of the Gilded Age, social arbiter Alva Smith Vanderbilt (1853–1933) and architect Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895) designed a series of period homes with trend-setting interiors that profoundly marked the evolution of domestic design in late nineteenth-century America. Where Hunt was interested in academic reference, Alva Vanderbilt was absorbed in cultural tourism; their respective visions would be interpreted and formulated by the now largely forgotten Parisian decorator and art dealer Jules Allard (1832–1907) whose family firm would create the high style Gothic through neoclassical style interiors in Newport and New York that have now become synonymous with Vanderbilt.