Alva Belmont
- Bobby Kelley
- Sep 5
- 3 min read
(January 17, 1853 - January 26, 1933)
Alva Erskine Smith was born on January 17, 1853, in Mobile, Alabama, to Murray Forbes Smith, a wealthy cotton merchant, and Phoebe Ann Desha, daughter of Congressman Robert Desha. She spent her early years in the South until the Civil War disrupted her father’s business. The family relocated north and eventually abroad, where Alva received her schooling in France before returning to New York as a young woman.
She married William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, on April 20, 1875. Determined to gain her new family acceptance in New York’s rigid society, she commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design the château-inspired townhouse at 660 Fifth Avenue. On March 26, 1883, she hosted the legendary Vanderbilt Ball, which forced Caroline Astor, the reigning social leader, to formally acknowledge the Vanderbilts. Alva thus secured her place as one of the era’s dominant hostesses.
She also played a decisive role in establishing the Metropolitan Opera, helping shift social and cultural influence from old New York families to the new industrial elite.
She and William K. Vanderbilt had three children: Consuelo (1877–1964), William K. Vanderbilt II (1878–1944), and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt (1884–1970). Consuelo, famously coerced by her mother into marriage with Charles Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, wed him in 1895. The union produced two sons but ended in a 1921 divorce and a 1926 annulment granted by the Catholic Church, in which Alva herself testified to the coercion. Consuelo later married Jacques Balsan, a French aviation pioneer.
Alva’s building projects were extensive. Her residences included the Petit Château on Fifth Avenue, Marble House in Newport (completed 1892), Belcourt in Newport (remodeled after her second marriage), Brookholt on Long Island (1897), and later Beacon Towers at Sands Point (1917). She also purchased and restored the Château d’Augerville in France in 1926. Marble House became especially significant; after her husband gave it to her as a birthday present, she later built a Chinese Tea House on its grounds in 1913, a pavilion that served as a stage for suffrage rallies.
In 1895 Alva shocked society by divorcing William K. Vanderbilt, citing adultery. She retained Marble House and custody of the children along with a generous settlement.
On January 11, 1896, she married Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont. They lived at Belcourt and Brookholt until his sudden death in 1908. After his passing, she commissioned Hunt & Hunt to design a mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, a limestone Gothic chapel modeled on the Chapel of St. Hubert at Amboise, completed in 1913.
Widowed and wealthy, Alva turned her formidable energy to women’s suffrage. In 1909 she founded the Political Equality Association, and by 1913 she was closely allied with Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party. She funded parades, demonstrations, and the defense of pickets arrested at the White House, and
eventually served as president of the NWP. In 1929 she financed the organization’s purchase of the historic Sewall House in Washington, D.C., dedicated as the Alva Belmont House, now preserved as the Belmont–Paul Women’s Equality National Monument.
Her later years were spent largely in France, dividing time between Paris, the Riviera, and Augerville. Alva Belmont died in Paris on January 26, 1933. Her funeral was held at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in New York, where, in recognition of her suffrage work, women served as pallbearers. After the service her coffin was taken to Woodlawn Cemetery, where she was placed beside Oliver in the Gothic mausoleum she had built.
Alva Belmont’s life spanned the transformation of the Gilded Age into the modern era. She rose from Southern merchant’s daughter to the highest echelons of New York society, reshaped the architectural landscape with her palatial homes, broke convention with a socially scandalous divorce, and finally devoted her fortune and willpower to securing the vote for women. Her legacy endures in the houses she built, the mausoleum she designed, and the suffrage movement she helped to victory.
thank you!