The urban mansion, completed in 1882 to designs by John B. Snook and Charles B. Atwood, was owned by members of the Vanderbilt family.

William Henry Vanderbilt's portion of the house had elaborate decor, with 58 rooms designed in a different style, as well as a central three-story art gallery with a large skylight.

[9] The southern section at 640 Fifth Avenue was a single-family unit, occupied by William Henry Vanderbilt, his wife Maria Louisa Kissam, and their youngest son George.

The stone, supposedly the largest ever quarried in the United States, was transported to the construction site by barge since it could not fit on a train.

[3][23][24] One thousand copies were printed of the series,[23] which art historian Earl Shinn authored under the pen name "Edward Strahan".

[9][10] Inspired by Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise in Florence,[27][29] the doors cost $25,000 (equivalent to $681,000 in 2023) and were reported by contemporary media as being made of bronze.

[29] The art historian E. Wayne Craven wrote that the doors were really just "thin metal screwed to a common wooden frame".

To the right was a stairway to the upper floors, while to the left was a set of carved oaken seats and a door leading to the drawing room.

[9][10] The south side of the hallway led to the southern section's main dining room, which measured 28 by 36 feet (8.5 by 11.0 m) and had wood wainscoting, a fireplace with carved mantel, and tapestries and paintings.

[9][10] The south dining room had an elliptical arched ceiling, which was divided into panels with carved fruit and foliate motifs.

[10] The eastern portion of the southern section's hallway led to a drawing room, parlor, and library facing Fifth Avenue.

Mrs. Vanderbilt's room faced the corner of Fifth Avenue and 51st Street and contained wooden cabinetry from France, a wainscoted wall topped by satins and tapestries, and a ceiling mural by Jules Lefebrve.

[2][42] William Henry Vanderbilt wanted to build a large house for his wife, Maria Louisa Kissam, but this was delayed by a lengthy lawsuit over Cornelius's will.

[43] Vanderbilt's extensive art collections required space, leading his wife to insist they add a wing to their existing house at 459 Fifth Avenue for their paintings.

[45][46] The lot, which stood diagonally across Fifth Avenue and 51st Street from the then-new St. Patrick's Cathedral,[4][5] had once been owned by sheep farmer Isaiah Keyser.

"[21][49] By the middle of 1881, the Fifth Avenue facade of the Triple Palace was being constructed, and nineteen large blocks of brownstone had been set in place.

[51] A subsequent New York Herald Tribune article said that the two decades following the mansion's opening comprised one of the two "great periods" of the house's existence.

[52] The art collection grew quickly and, in March 1883, Snook filed plans for additions to Vanderbilt's gallery and the northern section's conservatory.

His youngest son George, who did not yet have a grand mansion of his own, had a future interest, which meant he would obtain the Triple Palace upon Maria's death.

[23] Only Maria and George Vanderbilt continued to live in the southern portion of the house afterward, though they privately invited people to see the art collection.

[74][75] While city officials initially approved the porte cochere, they subsequently ordered it demolished, saying it projected too far onto the Fifth Avenue sidewalk.

[80][81] Frick acquired a ten-year lease on the southern residence and its furnishings, with George Vanderbilt receiving $50,000 in rent per year (equivalent to $1,315,000 in 2023).

[84] After Frick moved out, Cornelius III spent $500,000 (equivalent to $10,898,000 in 2023) to renovate the southern portion of the mansion, including $240,000 on physical alterations.

[64] Cornelius III's ownership marked the second "great period" of the house's history, as the New York Herald Tribune would later describe it.

[52] In subsequent years, the mansion's visitors included numerous heads of state, such as U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover and British prime minister Winston Churchill, as well as various other leaders and royal family members.

[84] Among the buyers for the furnishings were Paramount Pictures, which bought the rare woods for its own use,[22][58] as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which received the malachite urn from the entrance vestibule.

[102] Demolition of the southern section began in September 1947,[103] and the house had been totally razed by March 1949, when the cornerstone for the new building on the site was laid.

[68] In 1881, Montgomery Schuyler wrote of the Triple Palace: "If these Vanderbilt houses are the result of intrusting architectural design to decorators, it is to be hoped the experiment may not be repeated.

[16][19] The following year, Clarence Cook dubbed the mansion a "gigantic knee-hole table",[35][106] calling the design "discreditable to the profession of architecture" in the United States.

[35][68] Two decades after the house's completion, Herbert Croly wrote that the exterior was "far from interesting" while the brownstone "indicates a blind ignorance of the drift of American architectural advance".