High Society

The Vanderbilt Cup, with its initial location on Long Island, New York, was known for attracting the cream of society: the Astors, the Payne-Whitneys, the Goulds and more. These were the people that sat in specially constructed grandstands - the place to be seen. Average New Yorkers - and others from outside the state - clustered at points all around the meandering circuits on public roads through the rural community, numbering at times over 200,000.