sband inherited $65 million from his father's estate, Alva set her sights on owning a yacht. William had the Alva commission by Harlan and Hollingsworth of Wilmington, Delaware, at a cost of $500,000. While J.P. Morgan's yacht Corsair was 165 feet long, Mrs. Astor's Nourmahal was 233 feet and even Alva's departed father-in-law's North Star measured 270 feet, this generation would have a yacht, at 285 feet long, that was the largest private yacht in the world. The Vanderbilts then toured the Caribbean and Europe in the highest fashion. This being done, Alva then wanted a "summer cottage" in fashionable Newport, Rhode Island. William commissioned Richard Morris Hunt again, and the elaborate Marble House was built next door to Mrs. Astor's Beechwood. Alva's ostentatious displays of wealth helped to fuel American public interest in the lives of the rich and powerful, and, coupled with the opulent and decade
nt lifestyles by America's rich and their apparent disregard for the wellbeing of the working class, helped to also fuel fears that America had become a plutocracy. Second marriage Belcourt Castle, the Belmont summerhouse in Newport, Rhode Island. Alva Vanderbilt shocked society in March 1895 when she divorced her husband who had long been unfaithful, at a time when divorce was rare among the elite, and received a large financial settlement said to be in excess of $10 million, in addition to several estates. She already owned Marble House outright. The grounds for divorce were allegations of William's adultery, although there were some who believed that William had hired a woman to pretend to be his seen mistress so that Alva would divorce him. Alva remarried on January 11, 1896, to Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, one of her ex-husband's old friends. Oliver had been a friend of the Vanderbilts since the late 1880s and like William was a great fan of yachting and horseraces.
He had accompanied them on at least two long voyages aboard their yacht the Alva. Scholars have written that it seems to ha