The brick and shingle structure was destroyed by a fire, which started in the kitchen, in November 1892.
 The family, including Cornelius, Alice, Gertrude and Gladys, had been staying at the house for the Christmas holiday.
 At the time, Vanderbilt stated that the house was insured for $125,000, the furniture for $75,000 and the boiler for $10,000, a total of $210,000, at least several hundred thousand dollars less than what it was worth.
 In the wreckage, workers found two safes which contained his wife's jewelry that were only minimally damaged from the intense heat.

Vanderbilt replaced the 1878 residence with a massive, and now more well known, house by the same name, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and constructed between 1893 and 1895.
The new Breakers became a 70-room mansion with a gross area of 125,339 square feet (11,644.4 m²) and 62,482 square feet (5,804.8 m²) of living area on five floors that is today owned and operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County.
The brick and shingle structure was destroyed by a fire, which started in the kitchen, in November 1892.  The family, including Cornelius, Alice, Gertrude and Gladys, had been staying at the house for the Christmas holiday.  At the time, Vanderbilt stated that the house was insured for $125,000, the furniture for $75,000 and the boiler for $10,000, a total of $210,000, at least several hundred thousand dollars less than what it was worth.  In the wreckage, workers found two safes which contained his wife's jewelry that were only minimally damaged from the intense heat.
Vanderbilt replaced the 1878 residence with a massive, and now more well known, house by the same name, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and constructed between 1893 and 1895. The new Breakers became a 70-room mansion with a gross area of 125,339 square feet (11,644.4 m²) and 62,482 square feet (5,804.8 m²) of living area on five floors that is today owned and operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County.
The Breakers (1878)