CNN’s Anderson Cooper has gone through a lot, and still has a lot to go through—70 boxes full of items, in fact. While he’s processing the death of his mother, the celebrated socialite, heiress, designer, and artist Gloria Vanderbilt, he’s been tasked with the physical work of sorting through the many mementos she accumulated over the years in her Upper East Side apartment. In a recent New York Times article, the broadcast journalist opened up about his lifelong grieving process after the deaths of his family members, including his father, who died of a heart attack when Cooper was 10 years old, his brother, who died when both siblings were in their 20s, and his mother, who died in 2019 at the age of 95.
Cooper began the daunting job of digging through the objects his family left behind more than a year after his mother’s passing, and has yet to finish. Vanderbilt must have known the work of combing through the stuff of her illustrious life would be taxing, as she saw fit to leave some helpful info to guide her son. The news anchor told the Times that he started coming across notes written on his mother’s stationery in drawers and various containers around her apartment. The late heiress unpacked the stories behind the items for Cooper to find as he began packing the things away: “These are Daddy’s pyjamas,” Vanderbilt wrote on a piece of paper near a pair of satin trousers. In a plastic container that held a white silk shirt and knitted skirt, Vanderbilt indicated that this was the outfit she’d been wearing when Cooper’s brother Carter died in 1988.
While making his way through the objects of Vanderbilt’s home, he started recording voice memos to document the process. Eventually, the notes took the shape of a podcast: “All There Is With Anderson Cooper,” a show about love and grief that premiered its second season last month.
As for the items he’s recovered from Vanderbilt’s abode, Cooper already has a gallery of his mother’s paintings, and photographs taken of her (some of which are signed by legendary photographers) hanging on the wall next to the main staircase. He’s still contemplating what to do with some of the objects he’s discovered, like his father’s reading glasses and a Victorian clock frozen in time at the date of his brother’s death.
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Cooper’s own New York home is a historic Greenwich Village firehouse built in 1906. The 56-year-old bought the Beaux Arts building for $4.3 million in 2009 and teamed up with architect and developer Cary Tamarkin to convert it into living quarters, preserving many of its period features. Tamarkin told DNAinfo in 2010 that both he and Cooper wanted to be “nothing but respectful” to the 8,240-square-foot space during the renovation.