The Vanderbilts of Manalapan: A Local History

By Bob Davidsson
        Consuelo Vanderbilt Spencer-Churchill Balsan, former Duchess of Marlborough and chatelaine of England's Blenheim Palace, purchased five acres of land on the south end of Hypoluxo Island in 1934 to build her new winter home.
        She wanted it to face "Eastover," the mansion built four years earlier by younger brother Harold Stirling Vanderbilt (1884 - 1970), located directly across the branch of the Lake Worth Lagoon separating Hypoluxo from Manalapan's seaside barrier island.
        Consuelo named her 26,177-square-foot mansion "Casa Alva" (the house of Alva) in honor of their formidable mother, Alva Erskine Vanderbilt Belmont. She hired her brother's Swiss-born architect, Maurice Fatio, to design the Mediterranean-Revival style mansion which the heiress often referred to as "The Cottage".
        Harold and Consuelo were the great-grandchildren of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the 19th century shipping and railroad tycoon who during his lifetime was the richest man in America. Both siblings were multi-millionaires through inheritance and family business enterprises.
        It was Harold Vanderbilt who in 1931 incorporated Hypoluxo Island and a section of barrier island south of Lantana's East Ocean Avenue into the Town of Manalapan.
        Hypoluxo was one of several place names once used to describe the Lake Worth Lagoon. The common meaning is "body of water with no way out" in a Seminole dialect, and dates back to the 19th century when the lagoon was a freshwater lake instead of today's tidal estuary.
        Palm Beach County pioneer George Carter was the first settler to homestead Hypoluxo Island in the 1880's. Pineapples, coconuts and alligator meat were the main cash commodities produced during the early history of the island.
        Manalapan is a place name shared with a city in New Jersey established in the 1840's. In the native American Lenape language it translates to "a place of good bread," or its less flattering original meaning - "covered swamp with edible roots."
        In 1892, the Hypoluxo Beach Company was organized in New Jersey to develop properties  east of Lantana. David Baird, a company founder, lived in Manalapan, N.J., and suggested it as a future name for the Florida community. As a result, today there are two cities sharing the same name.
        The Ocean-Island Corporation acquired a one-mile strip of land in the 1920's, south of Palm Beach and east of Lantana, to develop an exclusive subdivision by the sea. Harold Vanderbilt was one of the investors acquiring property within this tract.
        While his mansion was under construction in Manalapan, the Vanderbilt's purchased and remodeled the "El Solano" estate from 1925-30. The Palm Beach mansion was designed by architect Addison Mizner in 1919. "El Solano" was later acquired by the late John and Yoko Ono Lennon from 1980-86.
        When he established the seaside town, Vanderbilt envisioned Manalapan as a low-density community and winter retreat for upscale entrepreneurs like himself. His vision holds true today.
        Manalapan residents have a median household income of $216,250. Their median property values are $2 million, and 96.4 percent of the town's residents own their homes, according to 2017 U.S. Census estimates.
        A headline in the July 5, 1970 edition of the Palm Beach Post reported, "Manalapan was Vanderbilt's Town." At the time of his death, he was the town's honorary "Mayor Emeritus".
        The newspaper's analysis was based on the facts that in addition to incorporating the town in 1931, Harold Vanderbilt served on its governing council for 32 years, and was mayor of Manalapan from 1952 through 1966.
        Vanderbilt was a director on the board of the New York Central Railroad for four decades. He also served as president of the board of trustees for Vanderbilt University, founded by his family in Nashville, TN, after the Civil War. A bronze statue of Harold Vanderbilt, created by New York artist Joseph Kiseleweski, was dedicated in 1965 on the university campus for his years of service.
         His favorite pastimes were yachting and contract bridge. Many card players consider him the "father of contract bridge" for establishing the rules used today in tournament play back in 1925. The Vanderbilt yacht "Enterprise" defended the "America's Cup" against international challengers during sailing races held in 1930, 1934 and 1937.
        The Vanderbilt home, known as "Eastover," is a three-story Italian Renaissance-style mansion completed in 1930. The architectural firm of Treanor and Fatio designed a mansion with imported stone and stucco walls and a clay tile roof. Construction costs at that time totaled about $500,000.
        The mansion is located on a beach coastal ridge overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The estate once occupied a six-acre site extending from the ocean to the Lake Worth Lagoon and was intersected by South Ocean Blvd.
        "Eastover" was approved in December 2002 for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. It was selected for both its architectural design and historic significance to the Town of Manalapan.
        Harold Vanderbilt died in July 1970 at age 85 at his Rock Cliff estate in Newport, R.I. He was buried in St. Mary's Churchyard at Portsmouth, R.I.
        His "Eastover" estate in Manalapan has changed ownership several times since his passing. In the year 2000, Veronica Hearst, the third wife and widow of publishing company heir Randolph Apperson Hearst, purchased "Eastover".
        Unfortunately, the mansion proved to be a costly investment. The publishing heiress and New York socialite soon overextended her finances. The estate was subdivided, and 150 feet of oceanfront property was sold. The mansion went into foreclosure in 2008, but survives under private ownership as an historic landmark today.

Consuelo Vanderbilt and the Churchill Family
        Railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt (1877 - 1964) of Manalapan married twice - once for royal titles and a second time for love. Her second husband was aviation pioneer and textile company heir Lt. Col. Jacques Balsan, whom she married in 1921 and remained with until his death in 1956 at age 88.
        Her first husband was Great Britain's 9th Duke of Marlborough, Charles Spencer-Churchill (1871 - 1934). They were wed in a New York City high-society ceremony Nov. 6, 1895, following tough prenuptial negotiations between her ambitious mother, Alva Vanderbilt, and the Churchill family at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church.
        Consuelo, blessed with natural beauty and inherited wealth, was considered the most successful of the Gilded Age "Dollar Princesses" in the 1890's. They were marriages of convenience and social status. American women sought the titles of European nobility. Impoverished Europeans shared their family titles in exchange for American dollars. The American duchess had a net worth of $20 million in 1895.
         Between 1895 and their divorce in 1921, Consuelo became the Duchess of Marlborough and the chatelaine of the Churchill's time-worn Blenheim Palace in England. In exchange, Charles Spencer-Churchill received a dowry of $2.5 million from the Vanderbilt's and annual dividends from their railroads.
        John Churchill, the First Duke of Marlborough, was one of England's most famous warrior-heroes. As England's field marshal in Europe, he defeated the armies of France's Sun King, Louis XIV, during the War of Spanish Succession. Construction of Blenheim Palace began during the final years of his life.
        In 1897, Consuelo gave birth to the first of her two sons, John Albert William Spencer-Churchill. He became the next in line to become the 10th Duke of Marlborough, replacing his older cousin, Sir Winston Churchill, who would have inherited the title if Consuelo's husband, Charles, died without an heir.
        Some historians speculate that Sir Winston's loss of the hereditary title of Duke of Marlborough was one factor motivating him to pursue a career in public service and politics. Despite his titular demotion, Consuelo and Winston remained friends throughout their long lives.
        After her divorce to Charles Spencer-Churchill in 1921, Consuelo lived in Europe with her second husband, Jacques Balsan, until 1939. Sir Winston was a frequent visitor to their home in Dreux, France, and once made a painting of their St. Georges Hotel residence while a guest.
        At the end of World War II, Churchill was defeated in his bid for reelection as prime minister of England. He visited South Florida in the winter of 1946, and stayed at Consuelo's "Casa Alva" as a guest of his American friends in Manalapan while preparing a speech to be given at Westminster College.
        His "Sinews of Peace" message, delivered March 5, 1946 as a guest lecturer at the college, served as a warning of future aggression by Soviet Russia in Eastern Europe and became known to history as the "Iron Curtain Speech":

        "From Stettin in Baltic
         to Trieste in the Adriatic,
         an 'Iron Curtain' has descended
         across the continent..."

        Consuelo Vanderbilt sold "Casa Alva" after the death of her second husband in 1956. It was purchased by William and Maura Benjamin. The Point Manalapan mansion was converted into the private "Manalapan Club" for several years, then restored to a family residence, as it remains today.
        After the sale of "Case Alva" for $6.8 million, Consuelo Vanderbilt moved to the Town of Palm Beach. She bought the 1940 neo-classical villa of heiress Audrey Emory, located on East Verdado Road, to use as her new winter residence.
        The former Duchess of Marlborough died Dec. 6, 1964 in Southampton, Long Island. She was buried next to her younger son at St. Martin's Church, Oxfordshire, England, a short distance from Blenheim Palace.
        As for "Eastover" and "Casa Alva," they remain the architectural centerpieces of a time in history when Manalapan was "Vanderbilt's Town".
(c.) Davidsson. 2020.