Gertrude Vanderbilt’s Long Island home still won’t sell

The historic home of railroad heiress and Whitney Museum founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney has sat on the market for over a year without securing a buyer. And real estate-watchers want to know why.

Built in the early 1910s, the five-bedroom former art studio on Long Island’s North Shore features grand salons and statue-filled gardens. Buyers have visited — including a handful of artists and fashion designers. And the home’s $4.75 million price tag is reasonable for its expensive Old Westbury neighborhood.

But “the right fit has not arrived yet,” said Gertrude’s 68-year-old great-grandson John LeBoutillier, who owns the estate with his sister Susan Hunes. Rather than settling for a quick sale, “I want to sell it to people who will revere it and continue it the way we have,” LeBoutillier added. “My goal all along has been to preserve what my great-grandmother had built and her legacy.”

Born in Manhattan in 1875, Gertrude was the great-granddaughter of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and the wife of Harry Payne Whitney, whose fortune came from thoroughbred breeding and racing. But Gertrude was also a pioneer who broke from Gilded Age norms. For one, she had a full-blown career as a well-regarded artist and worked on her sculptures daily, a rarity for Vanderbilt women. Equally key, Gertrude had her own money, courtesy of her father, who left the family fortune to her, rather than to her brothers — a bold move in 19th-century New York.

Originally built in the 1910s, Gertrude’s estate was converted into a five-bedroom home by her granddaughter, Pamela LeBoutillier, John’s mother. Situated between two sprawling country clubs, the home’s provenance should have made it an easy sell. But as it sits on the market, insiders wondered whether the Vanderbilt connection adds much value.

“The Vanderbilts were unusually successful in that they lasted a very long time, and yet it didn’t work out well in the end because their legacy produced a substantial amount of unhappiness,” said Professor Michael McGerr, who chairs Indiana University’s history department. And much of that sadness was borne by Gertrude.

Her most notable battle was with her own sister-in-law, with whom she infamously fought for custody of nine-year-old Gloria Vanderbilt in 1934. Gloria was Gertrude’s niece and Anderson Cooper’s artist mother who passed away in 2019 at 95. Far better resourced and pedigreed than Gloria’s mother — Gertrude came out victorious.

Gertrude wasn’t known for elaborate displays of wealth and her Delano & Aldrich-designed estate reflects her relative modesty. “It was William H. and his sons who created the lavish lifestyles that we associate with the Vanderbilts,” says T.J. Stiles, biographer, historian, and two-time Pulitzer prize winner. 

Most of the Vanderbilts’ homes have either been demolished or converted into tourist attractions. Both the Breakers — Alice and Cornelius II Vanderbilt’s 70-room castle in Newport — and the Biltmore, George Vanderbilt’s 250-room residence in Asheville, North Carolina, are now museums. In Manhattan, 13 of the family’s original 14 private homes have been demolished, including Gertrude’s parents’ 12,000-square-foot residence, which experts say would now be worth $150 million. Today, only one Vanderbilt home still stands in New York; it too is on the market, available for a cool $50 million.

With so many Vanderbilt properties lost to time, LeBoutillier is doing everything possible to ensure his great-grandmother’s estate finds a buyer committed to its preservation. The sale, he said, has never been about money. “We want the overall feel [of the place] to stay the way it is. Honoring her legacy is what’s most important here,” he said.

Paul Mateyunas, the agent representing the property said, “The buyers have to fall in love with it because it’s a lifestyle. This house is a lifestyle.”