The next day Alva went to see her father-in-law. His office was decorated with stuffed antelope, mouflon and deer heads on the walls. He had a fondness for marble sculptures, mostly of nearly naked men, their muscles taut, bows and arrows drawn. Billy was seated behind an enormous mahogany desk flanked by two celestial leather globes on gilded stands. The wall behind him sported a map of the country showing all his railroads.
“I have an idea and I want to present it to you.” He didn’t say anything, didn’t try to stop her, so she kept going. “I think we should get everyone who was denied a box at the Academy to pool their money and together we can build a new opera house of our own.”
Billy leaned forward, folded his big meaty hands on the desk and simply said, “Alva.” You silly, precious little thing, you.
“I’m quite serious about this.”
“And it’s a very ambitious idea, but it’s out of the question. We’re not in the business of building theaters and opera houses.”
But she wouldn’t let it go. “Think about it,” she said. “It would be an investment for all of us—all of you,” she corrected herself. “Everyone knows that the Academy is crumbling before the Knickerbockers’ very eyes. You could build a theater that would put theirs to shame. And you could put it in a far more fashionable part of town.”
Billy sat back, staring at her without saying a word. She sensed he was a bit annoyed. He had his finger marking his place on a ledger and seemed anxious to get back to work. Alva found his gaze unnerving and looked away, her eyes following the routes of the New York Central, the Burlington and Quincy Railroads. When she glanced back at him, Billy was stroking the tendrils of his whiskers. “It seems like an awfully big undertaking.”
“Maybe for someone else. But surely not you. You’ve never been one to shy away from big projects. And just think what you’d be doing for this city. You’d personally be adding to the cultural fabric of New York. How many men in this town can make that claim?” She saw the hint of a sparkle in his eye—he had liked the sound of that.
Billy rubbed his brow. “Let me think about it.”
You do that. She had planted a seed and now all she had to do was wait for it to germinate.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to wait long.
One week later, on the twenty-eighth of April, Billy called a meeting to discuss the matter with those prominent businessmen whose families had also been rejected by the Academy. They all gathered in a private dining room at Delmonico’s. Willie would have preferred that Alva didn’t attend the meeting, but she had insisted, vowing to keep her mouth shut.
Billy welcomed everyone and proceeded to lay out the scenario, of which they were all too aware. Alva sat with the other wives, at the opposite end of the table, hands folded in her lap. Her father-in-law continued to set the stage and when he said, “We all know that the old Academy is crumbling before the Knickerbockers’ very eyes,” it set off a round of chuckles, and Alva was flattered that he’d borrowed her line.
He pushed on. “If the nobs won’t allow us to be included, then the time has come for us swells to take control of this situation and establish our own opera house. What’s to prevent us? We certainly have the means.”
“That we do,” Cornelius agreed, reaching for his brandy snifter.
“I question if the timing is right for a new building,” said John Pierpont Morgan. He was an enormous man right down to his nose, which Alva couldn’t stop staring at. It was badly pitted and discolored. “We might be acting in haste,” he said.
The men agreed and, despite her promise to Willie, Alva couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “But don’t forget,” she said to Billy with all the Southern charm she could muster, “remember what you said about the Academy of Music being next door to Tammany Hall?” Billy looked at her, stumped, not remembering because, in fact, they had never had that conversation. “Remember?” she said, feeding him his lines. “Remember how they have anarchists and union men picketing out front? And how ladies no longer feel safe going down there. Not to mention the performers.”
Billy nodded and took over. “Those anarchists alone make the timing perfect for building a new theater in a safer, more fashionable location.”
“But where?” asked Jay Gould.
“Perhaps that vacant lot up north that you were telling me about—the one at Broadway and Thirty-Ninth Street,” Alva suggested, as if she hadn’t already inspected the location herself.
The meeting adjourned without any definitive decisions having been made, but the men did agree to meet again the following week. When they gathered that second time, Alva again took her seat with Cettie Rockefeller, Fanny Morgan and the handful of other wives.
“I’ve been giving this a good deal of thought,” said Jay Gould, his fingertips stroking a patch of white in his otherwise dark brown beard. “I think opening a new opera house on Thirty-Ninth and Broadway makes considerable sense.”
“And don’t forget,” said Otto Kahn, “we’d be protecting the ladies from the picketers and all that nonsense outside Tammany Hall . . .”
Alva sat silently, listening to them regurgitate her very argument from the week before. They had taken ownership of her idea, and that was exactly what she’d needed them to do. She’d known all along that they simply couldn’t have heard it from a woman and had to make it their own before they’d buy into the plan. By the time that meeting had adjourned, all twenty-two men seated around the table had agreed to invest $50,000 apiece and appointed Billy as the acting chairman.
* * *
—
Alva wasn’t done yet. The next day she went to see her father-in-law again and told him she had some concerns about building the new opera house.
“It’s just that you’re much too busy to oversee the construction, not to mention the decorating. I would suggest Willie, but you see, he’s left all those details for the new house up to me . . .”
She followed him out to his livery stables, the hay and twigs snapping beneath her shoes as she stepped around the piles of manure. Billy had twenty-four carriages in an array of colors, some with blue underbodies, others red or yellow; a different carriage for every occasion. The phaetons were for his morning jaunts to watch the sunrise from the pier. The broughams were for his afternoon ventures to play cards or inspect a bit of railroad track. The victorias and landaulets were for outings with Louisa. They were all mounted on the stable walls, and Alva had no idea how his coachmen got them down.
“Judging from the work I’ve been doing on the Fifth Avenue house,” she continued, “I can tell you that it’s going to be an extremely time-consuming project. And tedious. I’ve spent hours selecting lumber, stone, marble for the fireplaces, even things like the doorknobs and the thickness of the windowpane glass . . .” She purposely mentioned the most mundane items she could think of.