Belmont Memorial Chapel, constructed 1910, The Woodlawn Cemetery, final resting place for Alva Vanderbilt Belmont (1853-1933), socialite and suffragette, and her second husband, Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont (1858-1908) The Socialite Alva E. Belmont 1911 As a woman who amassed a great personal fortune following her marriages to two of the Gilded Age's wealthiest men, Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont (1853-1933) embodied many of the stereotypes of a social climber, an overly ambitious type bent on crashing the social glass ceilings of New York's Gilded Age society. Quite successful in her efforts, her life resembles one of those established and conceited society women in a novel by Edith Wharton or Henry James. Yet, after her second husband, Oliver, died in 1908, Alva's story takes a different turn, although elements of her domineering personality did not. Alva Smith was born January 17, 1853 in Mobile, Alabama to a moderately wealthy family. Before the C
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