He ran the family farm at New Dorp, Staten Island and lived with his mother at 640 Fifth Avenue after his father's death. After her death he moved out, renting the house to Henry Clay Frick until the latter's own mansion was completed; upon his death it was inherited by Cornelius Vanderbilt III(1873-1942), the disinherited son of George's oldest brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II.
George Washington Vanderbilt's greatest legacy is the largest of the Vanderbilt houses, the 255-room Biltmore House in North Carolina, on which he spent the bulk of his fortune. At his death after an emergency appendectomy, he was no longer a millionaire.