In 1910, Birdie set up the Virginia Fair Legacy Fund that rebuilt and endowed the Holy Family Day Home, a Roman Catholic school residence for children in San Francisco that had been damaged by the 1906 earthquake.

[2] Birdie Vanderbilt also spent considerable time in Paris, France, where tragedy struck in 1902 when her brother Charles and his wife were killed in an automobile accident.

In 1920, her estranged husband, who also maintained a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, inherited the Haras du Quesnay Thoroughbred breeding farm and racing stable near Deauville in France's famous horse region of Lower Normandy.

In 1933, tragedy struck her family again when her 26-year-old son, William Kissam Vanderbilt III, was killed in an automobile accident in South Carolina while driving home to New York City from his father's Florida estate.

Her mansion at 60 East 93rd Street later became the Permanent Mission of Romania to the United Nations, then part of the Lycée Français de New York until 2000, when it was sold to be converted back to a private residence.