host of the Gilded Gentleman History Podcast.
Let's answer your questions from the internet.
@guccionmiuccii asks, What do you admire so much
Most people when they think of The Gilded Age
think of great mansions and balls and extravagant food,
But what's interesting about The Gilded Age
when the very infrastructure of America was being built.
Railroads, transportation, electricity, gas,
There was a moment when Thomas Edison flipped the switch
and for the first time New Yorkers saw electric light
Technology was moving at an incredible rate,
of almost all of the dresses in The Gilded Age to be garish,
although the designs can be lovely,
and I wonder if the coloration is historically accurate
Well, we have to remember that after all, this is TV.
The good news is, we can see actual gowns
in museum collections all across the country.
And while the colors are not quite as garish,
and some of them are absolutely based
Because all the photography of this period
we tend to think of muted colors and blacks and grays,
or as bright as what we see on TV today,
but of course there were beautiful colors.
Look at pages of fashion magazines and you see that color.
@nocrad asks, Am I dumb for not knowing
I thought it was an expansion pack for elden ring.
You have to think about things that are gilded.
Gilding is a very thin surface of gold
So The Gilded Age is actually a pejorative phrase
called The Gilded Age: A Tale for Today.
What he was saying was that there's beauty and style,
like greed and racial inequality and injustice.
Were they really giving themselves BBL,
with those dresses in The Gilded Age?
What's interesting is that no gown could survive on its own.
It was all about the undergarments that gave the shape
By the time The Gilded Age came around,
to have a bustle in the back of your dress.
Think of a slinky on your lower backside.
It was to make the back of the dress protrude out
and then often attach a train to it
to give you a sense of elegance when you moved about a room.
If you had a lot of mechanics back here,
And the answer is, you could only perch
What did they eat at those fancy Gilded Age parties?
12-course meals? What is the weirdest thing on the menu?
These dinners were not short, maybe three hours.
that exist from places like Delmonicos.
There are also in some archives, some catering notebooks
that actually list the private menus
at places like the Astors and the Vanderbilt.
So we actually can see exactly what was served.
Two of the most famous and popular dishes,
one was canvas back duck and the other was terrapin,
They were expensive and they were hard to get.
One of the strangest was roast peacock.
It was a peacock that you plucked of its feathers,
and then you reassembled the peacock.
The head was stuffed and all the plumage was reinserted
and that's how it arrived at the table.
but my favorite part of any dinner party is dessert.
The most popular dessert was ice cream.
we didn't have the enormous freezers that we have today.
And so to make and to serve ice cream
for 400 people, that cost you a lot of money
and a whole lot of ice to keep the ice cream cold.
is really important to remember, ladies,
is that you were strapped into a corset.
So if you think you even had the possibility
of eating a lot, let me tell you right now, you didn't.
@nelstamp says, One thing about The Gilded Age
is how similar robber barons are to billionaires now.
Take everything from workers to enrich themselves.
I could pretty much agree with you.
where there's a great deal of technological advancement.
is talk about who the robber barons were
At the top of the pile, you had Rockefeller,
Vanderbilt was predominantly railroads.
And then you had J.P. Morgan and Jay Gould.
They were all about money and banking.
Our billionaires of today are creating infrastructure too.
that arguably make our lives more connected,
but we see examples of tremendous dichotomy of wealth
and still instances of social injustice.
Did the 1% of The Gilded Age throw wild parties
like some of their modern counterparts have?
And you can see that depicted in the HBO series,
decided he wanted to entertain his horse friends.
There was a famous dinner on horseback.
That means horses were brought into the dining room,
they were circled up, they were saddled,
and all of the guests climbed on horseback
and they were served a multi-course dinner
with bottles of champagne in their saddlebags.
to show off her brand new chateau on Fifth Avenue
Everybody had to come as a figure from history.
One of the most famous costumes at that ball
who showed up in a stunning gold and silver gown
because let's remember electricity was so new at that point.
And she was very much dressing on a very popular trend.
Often, a party evening began with a night at the opera.
Imagine sitting through a performance at the opera
in your grand gown and then going to Mrs. Astor's
or Mrs. Vanderbilt's at around 11 o'clock in the evening,
you'd have a big full buffet and dancing until about 6:00 AM
when you'd have another lavish breakfast,
would he be the richest person alive?
It all depends on how you measure money and wealth.
If we look at it in terms of Rockefeller's wealth
as a percentage of gross domestic product, in 1913,
his wealth was measured at almost $1 billion.
was roughly 2.3% of the entire output of the country.
it's approximately 4% of the gross domestic product today,
One gel asks, So I've started streaming The Gilded Age.
Am I wrong in thinking that the Russells
there is certainly some Vanderbilt overtones with him,
but there's also another financier of The Gilded Age,
Jay Gould, who's right here on the table with me.
in the character of George Russell as well.
One of the characteristics of some of these financiers
of The Gilded Age, and particularly Jay Gould,
They were not afraid to roll the dice, make a fortune,
lose a fortune, and roll the dice again.
there are some similarities we could certainly say
Now, Bertha comes from very humble beginnings.
She came from southern roots and they had some money.
But what was important is they were outside of society.
Mrs. Astor had not accepted either Bertha Russell
And in order to maneuver at all in Gilded Age society,
Mrs. Astor had to give you her stamp of approval.
So of course, two of the most well-known families
in America's Gilded Age were the Astors and the Vanderbilts.
But what really was the difference between the two of them,
John Jacob Aster came here in the 1700s
The Vanderbilts, well, they came here even earlier,
but they were just poor farmers on Staten Island.
They came from the Netherlands, from Der Bilt.
That's how they got their name, Vanderbilt.
But it wasn't until the early mid-part of the 19th century
started to create a transportation empire
you had to be an old family with old money
that went back as far as four generations.
The Vanderbilts were an old family with new money,
One of the interesting stories here
where we can draw some fascinating similarities
is in the character of Gladys Russell,
to a very important and titled British Duke.
Well, Alva and Willie K. Vanderbilt,
and her name was Consuelo Vanderbilt.
In order to secure her position in society,
Alvin manipulated a marriage with Consuelo
This was not a very happy marriage.
so that Consuelo would become a duchess,
and New York Gilded Age society liked nothing more
aside from their grand dinner parties than a title.
One bathroom in a four-story house?
Maybe one of the things that you have to remember
is there were fewer of them than we have today.
Not every bedroom had their own bathroom.
People had to share. And also think about it.
When you went to a grand ball with your ball gowns,
there was no ladies' room or men's room,
so that meant you had to be very careful
about what you ate and what you drank.
For gentlemen, there was sometimes a chamber pot
behind a screen in that men's smoking room,
If you're a lady, it was a little more difficult.
There was a famous story when Consuelo Vanderbilt
She said in all this palace, there's not one habitable room.
And one of the challenges were the bathrooms.
Often there'd only be one on a floor
and there's a story she tells of all of the maids lining up
so that their mistresses would not lose a place in line
Psychological_Roof85 asks, What would be the benefit
to marrying into poor British aristocracy?
There was nothing more seductive in Gilded Age high society
than having a European aristocratic title.
A lot of the European aristocrats had titles,
So in that way, it was a perfect marriage.
could marry a sort of impoverished European aristocrat.
The American family got a title for their daughter
and the European aristocrat got a lot of money
When we think of the great British country estates,
they were essentially working farms
by actually producing crops and selling them.
America became a great producer of wheat
and was able to ship that produce to Europe
Consequently, nobody wanted to buy the British grain
and it took a lot of money to maintain these estates
So the easiest fix was to marry a wealthy American heiress
@AthertonKD asks, When did The Gilded Age end?
as to when The Gilded Age actually started and ended,
but to me, it would start around 1870 post-Civil War.
There was a tremendous amount of wealth being created
as the infrastructure of the country was being born.
There was a lot of money in society
that was being spent with little restraint.
It really began to wane and end around 1900.
We had a new president, Teddy Roosevelt.
All of those great fortunes were starting to wane.
dblan3 asks, What was the estimated time
for a Gilded Age woman to get ready
to go to a charity event or visit a friend?
Great Gilded Age hairstyles took a long time.
For example, if you were going to go to a ball
in the evening, you would have to have the hairdresser
maybe as early as eight o'clock in the morning
and dress your hair, maybe weave in some of the jewels,
and then you had to sit all day long without moving
before you could put on your gown and your furs
and the rest of your jewelry and go to the ball.
could get into a ball gown by herself.
There was the bustle, there was the corset,
and that was another subliminal message
You needed maids to help you get into your clothes.
Someone like Mrs. Vanderbilt would have a ladies' maid,
and that was who took care of your clothes
that took care of the ironing and the linen
and all the other aspects of the house
that were handled by butlers and footmen.
One statistic that's truly fascinating
was when Henry Clay Frick built his house on Fifth Avenue,
and there were 30 servants employed in the house.
From the NoStupidQuestions subreddit,
I am watching the HBO series, 'The Gilded Age.'
single-family Manhattan homes today?
And what area of Manhattan is that supposed to be?
The area that you asked about is the Upper East Side.
Central Park was new and anybody that could
it simply became impossible to have these mansions function.
Many of these palatial mansions were in fact torn down.
on the site of where you find Bergdorf Goodman today
on the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.
That was the mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt II.
At one time, that was the grandest,
A number of organizations took over some of the mansions.
their mansion is still there on Fifth Avenue.
that's one of the original Gilded Age mansions,
SeaTie8730 asks, Okay, but why is no one talking
about Mrs. Astor and her power over society?
There is a lot to say about Mrs. Aster.
This was a portrait done by Carolus-Duran.
Mrs. Aster is painted here in a black velvet gown.
but that still doesn't explain why she had so much power
Mrs. Aster saw that society was changing,
and she thought, I can help create a new American society.
She had a henchman named Ward McAllister
that we see in the HBO Gilded Age series,
and between Ward McAllister and Mrs. Aster,
they decided who was in and who was out.
So often people talk about The Gilded Age 400,
and the only proper people were the 400 people
that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom.
Well, that's a little bit of mythology.
actually published a list in the newspaper of the families
that he thought were the appropriate families
of Gilded Age society, and it wasn't 400.
but think about it, 400 people dancing
I don't think anyone ever actually counted.
Fidelllll asks, I'm a middle-class man
living in New York City in the 1880s.
that were starting to become very, very popular.
Rector's was known as a lobster palace
where you could get all kinds of wonderful seafood.
Luchow's was a German-inspired beer hall.
One of your choices was for good New York oysters.
Now, there's still a delicacy in New York today,
but in the 19th century, they were everywhere
and they were much less expensive than they are today.
In fact, tourists would come to New York
and they were shocked by the size of the oysters
you could get them from stands on the corner,
and the oysters here in New York were local oysters
and they had a taste all their own.
Wait, how did most Gilded Age millionaires
Were they just blowing money on mansions, cars and [beep].
If you were a Gilded Age gentleman,
having a yacht was one of the most ostentatious ways
and there were horse tracks up in Northern Manhattan
where men could actually race each other.
anybody with a significant amount of money
and the place to have your country house
Newport became a famous resort among The Gilded Age elite,
and they built palace after palace after palace
Again, another way to show off your money
and hopefully find a husband for your daughter.
And here's a question from the history subreddit.
Is this what trending looked like in the 19th century?
And we have an image of one of the newspaper offices,
with the headlines splayed across the front.
You'd often find on street corners,
newsboys with newspapers held up or signs
Newspaper publishers like Hearst and Pulitzer
It was all about making it as sensational as possible,
which led to the rise of what was called yellow journalism,
which is scandalous, maybe not always 100% correct,
There was a fair number of gossip in the press too.
There was a publication called Town Topics
that was pretty salacious and pretty scandalous
that reported what our Gilded Age 1% was up to
and just who they were up to it with.
@_ADoodle Esquire asks, What was the craziest sex scandal
who was the most famous architect of The Gilded Age,
according to many people, on a sultry evening in 1906
on the top of Madison Square Garden,
which at the time was actually at Madison Square.
It was after a performance of the theater.
He was actually murdered at point-blank range
who had married a woman named Evelyn Nesbit, with whom,
when she was quite young, Stanford White had a relationship.
The result of this is the tabloids ate it up.
The trial, the ensuing trial, all of this,
even down to what Harry K. Thaw was served in prison
for dinner was covered by the newspapers.
You didn't have a phone, so you had to write letters.
Business proceeded much more slowly
because you had to send things like telegrams.
One of the things families did was to use a stereograph.
Photography was becoming so much more popular,
The way it worked is you had a card with double images,
maybe of here in New York in Central Park,
and magically the two images came together
things like listening to music at home changed too.
You didn't have to have an orchestra in your ballroom
to have the beginnings of a phonograph,
and these cylinders were becoming popular
that you could actually put on and you could hear sounds
they have these fine lines just like a record did
once upon a time before we even got to compact discs.
So think of this as a Gilded Age compact disc.
wholevodka asks, Is The Gilded Age depiction
One of the most exciting and fascinating things to me
about the HBO Gilded Age series is we actually see
the storyline of Peggy Scott and her family.
So in the first part of the 19th century,
the Black population was much more integrated
and it centered in lower Manhattan.
By the end of the 19th century, the move was out to Brooklyn
and other neighborhoods and communities of Brooklyn
Scholarship in this really began around 2012
with a landmark book called Black Gotham
by the scholar, Dr. Carla Peterson,
who actually, in researching her own family,
uncovered a story of a wealthy black elite
And that story had been lost for so, so many years.
in New York sort of went from enslavement
to the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance,
and now we have a much fuller story to tell.
And another question from Quora, Why were rich people
As we can see in some of the scenes from the show,
when you went to the opera, everyone was looking at you.
We have to look at the structure of a 19th century theater.
Well, the box seats in the opera house
had some of the worst views of the stage,
but they had the best views for the audience to see you.
about the opera being performed on the stage.
@jewishcomicsqueen asks, I really love the show,
but where are all the Jewish characters?
There were great Jewish families of wealth
and famous well-known financiers, Otto Kahn,
who contributed greatly to the artistic life of the city.
The story of Jacob Schiff, who was an immigrant,
and through his financial dealings,
he funded so much of the settlement house movement,
which actually helped immigrants establish their lives.
fascinating stories of Jewish New York
These are all the questions that we have time for today.
Thank you for watching Gilded Age Support.
