was rumored that the Vanderbilt ball cost a quarter of a million dollars, about $6.4 million in today’s money. Six-point-four million dollars for a party. For comparison, one of the maids who left Alva’s ball to await her mistress in a carriage parked on Fifty-Third Street as the spring evening grew cold and sharp, maybe stealing a nip of gin from the coachman, maybe flirting with a valet to pass the time, would have been paid around $350, in a year.
