Bringing Gilded Age NYC to life

a public scholarship round-up for history buffs & Wharton fans

As a podcast focused on public scholarship, we understand that not every subject translates well to audio. Discussing Undine Spragg’s relationship with her parents? Great podcast conversation! Explaining Gilded Age fashions? Not so much.

This is where our newsletter comes in. Here, we can share resources including photos, videos, and links to enhance your reading experience and supplement our conversational content.

Today we’re sharing a round-up of resources to help you visualize New York City in the Gilded Age. Take a virtual tour of the city with us as we link to articles on NYC neighborhoods, Fifth Avenue and Newport mansions, tenement housing, and Gilded Age landmarks you can still visit today. We hope this collection of public scholarship helps bring The Custom of the Country to life for you.

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You still have plenty of time to join us for Wharton in Winter. This Friday we will recap the first part of The Custom of the Country, chapters 1-10. Sign up for Patreon as a Literature Scholar and browse the “Wharton in Winter Collection” to find bonus episodes, reading schedules, and event calendars.

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Is there a piece of history or literature you would like to see us explore in the newsletter? Tell us in the comments!

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Mott Street New York, Jane Peterson (1916) courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Gilded Age Neighborhoods: From Mansions to Tenement Housing

• Mapping Gilded Age New York (PBS)

  • “The Gilded Age was a study in contrasts. Immigrants arrived in New York City with little to nothing in their pockets, while just uptown some of the richest men and women in America built mansions that resembled European palaces. As more and more people carved out their homes on the island at the end of the 19^th century, different ideas about what New York was and who belonged there emerged.”

• A History of Newport Mansions (The Preservation Society of Newport County)

  • “During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, Newport gained prominence as leaders of finance and industry from New York and elsewhere built ever-larger “summer cottages” and enjoyed a glittering social life of dinners, sports and parties. By the turn of the century, these cottages included European-inspired palaces such as Marble House, The Breakers, The Elms and Rosecliff.”

• Tenement Homes: The Outsized Legacy of New York’s Notoriously Cramped Apartments (NYPL)

  • “The Oxford English Dictionary’s primary definition of tenement is ‘a room or a set of rooms forming a separate residence within a house or block of apartments.’ It’s a fairly all-inclusive definition that speaks to the historic definitions of tenement as well as its modern and colloquial connotations, which the dictionary also addresses with this: ‘a house divided into and rented out as separate residences, especially one that is run-down and overcrowded.’” 

• Tenements and Toil (The Library of Congress)

  • “Urban life was often filled with hazards for the new immigrant, and housing could be one of the greatest dangers. At the turn of the century more than half the population of New York City, and most immigrants, lived in tenement houses, narrow, low-rise apartment buildings that were usually grossly overcrowded by their landlords. Cramped, poorly lit, under ventilated, and usually without indoor plumbing, the tenements were hotbeds of vermin and disease, and were frequently swept by cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis. The investigative journalist Jacob Riis, himself a Danish immigrant, launched a public campaign to expose and eradicate the exploitative housing new immigrants were forced to endure.”

• Beneath the Gold: Exploring Gilded Age Extremes (New York Historical Society)

  • “New York City has long been a place of extremes. During the Gilded Age (about 1870 to 1900), the contrast in the way the wealthy and the poor lived in New York was drastic. Part of New York housed the most affluent and prosperous citizens of the city. In the other lived poor denizens, many of them immigrants. These images from the Library’s collections showcase the harsh social and economic disparities of the Gilded Age in New York City.”

Gilded Age Mansions

• The 10 Best Gilded Age Mansions in the United States (House Beautiful)

• William A. Clark Mansion (Museum of the City of New York)

• A Guide to the Gilded Age Mansions of 5th Avenue’s Millionaire Row (6sqft)

• The Gilded Age Mansions of 5th Avenue in NYC (Untapped New York)

Gilded Age Landmarks

• 13 Gilded Age Landmarks (TimeOut)

• 10 Gilded Age Mansions You Can Visit (Untapped New York)

• 8 Lost Gems of New York’s Gilded Age (Curbed New York)

• The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home (The Mount)

Additional Gilded Age Resources

• Gilded Age Gardens (Smithsonian Libraries)

• What It Was Like to Attend Mrs. Astor’s Gilded Age Parties (Gotham)

• The Bowery Boys New York History Podcast

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