Pair of Lanterns for the 'Moorish' Smoking Room in the Cornelius Vanderbilt II Mansion, circa 1881

The Vanderbilt family’s success in the booming railroad business of the nineteenth century Gilded Age resulted in the fame and fortune that allowed for the family’s 5^th Avenue or ‘Millionaire’s Row’ mansions in Manhattan, New York. Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s (1843-1899) house on the corner of 57^th Street and 5^th Avenue spared no expense. Cornelius hired the architects George B. Post and Richard Morris Hunt to expand his mansion on 1 West 57^th Street. The renovation took place in two stages, one from 1881-1882 and then further expansion from 1892-1894. The interior was predominantly designed and decorated by John La Farge, an artist and designer contemporary to Louis Comfort Tiffany. However, as the project progressed, La Farge and Vanderbilt’s relationship declined and allowed for Tiffany and his company, Associated Artists, to have a hand in the design, in particular, the 'Moorish' smoking room exhibiting Tiffany's fascination with North Africa and the Middle East (Yarnall, p. 88).
Tiffany traveled extensively throughout the world, but his travels to North Africa and Spain in the 1870s were particularly transformative. Tiffany began his career as a painter, and in 1870-1871 he traveled to North Africa with fellow painter Robert Swain Gifford (1840-1905). He traveled to Algeria and Spain in December 1875 to February 1877. It may have been during this trip that he visited the Alhambra palace in Granada, and was captivated by the brilliance of its Islamic architecture and decoration. He collected numerous period photographs of the palace and owned a copy of Owen Jones’ 1845 book Details and Ornaments from the Alhambra. These trips proved to be an impactful influence of Tiffany’s works in both his praised paintings as well as the resulting glass works.
The present light fixtures are seen in a period photograph of the ‘Moorish’ smoking room as wall lights rather than the present orientation as hanging lanterns. They have an octagonal baluster form with a bronze frame and leaded rippled white glass with florets executed in chipped ‘fire opal’ glass that, when illuminated, has an effect like flames within the glass. A similarly designed monumental chandelier hung in the center of the room, from which smaller bronze hanging lanterns were suspended along each side. The American journalist Mary Gay Humphreys noted that the smoking room, along with the dining room and water-color room, “is the most important example of decorative work yet attempted in this country, in respect both to the scale on which it is employed and to its artistic intentions” (1883).
In 1926, Cornelius’ widow, Alice, was forced to sell the home which was then demolished by the new developers, Braisted Realty Corporation. She managed to donate some of the home’s interior and decorative works. The central chandelier of the smoking room ended up in Loew's State Theatre in Syracuse, New York where it hung in the main lobby during its opening on February 18, 1928. The theatre was designed by Thomas W. Lamb and, like Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s house, was heavily influenced by Middle Eastern iconography. It was here that some of the wall lights were adapted into hanging lanterns and suspended around the large chandelier rather than the original bronze fixtures. These remained with Loew's until 1975 when the theatre closed and the chandelier was sold.
The present lanterns embody a rich part of American history as well as the history of Tiffany’s career. This is a unique opportunity for collectors to own a product of America’s Gilded Age era and Tiffany’s early interior designs.