vanderblt mansion 5th avenue new york city

I took a photograph this morning of a print I found on eBay. 

This was the home of  Cornelius Vanderbilt II, son of William Henry Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius "Commodore" Vanderbilt and older brother to George Washington Vanderbilt, builder and owner of the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC.

I'm fascinated by this house so I keep looking for articles and photographs of it to use as inspiration.

Vanderbilt mansion, NYC, 5th Avenue

Here is a real picture post card of New York City, 5th Avenue, between 59th and 57th Streets. This was the home of one of the Vanderbilts. The house was torn down in the mid 1920s to make way for the Bergdorf Goodman department store. What a waste! Of course, by the time the house was torn down all the buildings towered over it, since the wealthy families who lived on 5th Avenue were moving farther up town, yet still along the same road.

I had a dream about this house. I was inside, walking down a hallway, looking into various rooms. But the thing is, I had never seen any photos of the inside of this house. Now that I have, I'm a little unsettled at how close my dream was to the real thing. 

What does this have to do with writing? Well, I think I'm going to turn my dream into a story. Someone who dreams about being inside a house that was destroyed years before the person was born. There are many ways to explore the possibilities and I can't wait to start writing.