rk for the company as director of the Walker College of Hair Culture, located on the ground floor of their Harlem residence. The hair-care business continued to prosper, and Madam Walker began building a lavish estate on the Hudson River, in nearby Irvington-on-Hudson. Its design was the work of Vertner Tandy, the first black architect licensed by the state, and cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars. It is rumored that famed Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, a guest and good personal friend of Madam Walker's, named the Italianate mansion Villa Lewaro, after the first letters of each of Lelia Walker Robinson's names.
             In 1919 Lelia and her daughter Mae undertook a business trip to South America. From there, she wrote to her mother and stated her plans to marry a doctor, James Kennedy, in accordance with Madam Walker's wishes. Tragically before Lelia and Mae were able to return, Madame C.J. Walker passed away, and Lelia Walker inherited her entire estate including the presidency of the company her mother had founded. Instead of wedding Kennedy as advised, she married another doctor, Wiley Wilson, a man that her mother specifically predicted would break her heart. She was right – in less than a year the two were divorced, and it indeed crushed her heart. In a baffling move somewhat influenced by her mother she renamed herself "A'Lelia," divorced Wiley Wilson, and finally married Kennedy. She then embarked upon a very indulgent and thrilling lifestyle that so many wealthy people similarly enjoyed during that time.
             At the Villa Lewaro she was transformed into the "goddess of joy" of the Harlem Renaissance. The vision of Jay Gatsby realized, her halls were lined with the most talented, rich and famous people of the t
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