- 5 minutes ago
Historian Carl Raymond joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about the Gilded Age. If John D. Rockefeller lived today, who would be the richest person: him or Elon Musk? When did the Gilded Age end? How long would it take for a Gilded Age woman to get ready? Answers to these questions and many more await on Gilded Age Support.
Check out more from Carl Raymond and The Gilded Gentleman History Podcast:
@carlthegildedgentleman
https://thegildedgentleman.com/
Check out more from Carl Raymond and The Gilded Gentleman History Podcast:
@carlthegildedgentleman
https://thegildedgentleman.com/
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00I'm Carl Raymond, host of the Gilded Gentleman History Podcast.
00:04Let's answer your questions from the internet.
00:07This is Gilded Age Support.
00:14Gucci on Meucci asks,
00:17What do you admire so much about the Gilded Age?
00:20Most people, when they think of the Gilded Age,
00:23think of great mansions and balls and extravagant food.
00:27And most of that is true.
00:29But what's interesting about the Gilded Age is this was a moment when the very infrastructure of America was being
00:36built.
00:37Railroads, transportation, electricity, gas, all of these were coming together to create a modern America.
00:45There was a moment when Thomas Edison flipped the switch in Lower Manhattan,
00:49and for the first time, New Yorkers saw electric light in their buildings.
00:56Technology was moving at an incredible rate, sort of like it is today.
01:02Leonidas asks,
01:04I find the colors of almost all of the dresses in the Gilded Age to be garish,
01:09although the designs can be lovely.
01:11And I wonder if the coloration is historically accurate or a 21st century spin.
01:18Well, we have to remember that, after all, this is TV.
01:22The good news is, we can see actual gowns from the Gilded Age in museum collections all across the country.
01:29And while the colors are not quite as garish, the designs are just as lovely and some of them are
01:37absolutely based on original Gilded Age gowns.
01:41Because all the photography of this period is all in black and white, we tend to think of muted colors
01:46and blacks and grays.
01:47But that's not true either.
01:49It might not be as strong or as bright as what we see on TV today.
01:53But of course, there were beautiful colors.
01:55There were rich dyes.
01:57Look at pages of fashion magazines and you see that color.
02:11You have to think about things that are gilded.
02:15Gilding is a very thin surface of gold hiding something underneath.
02:21So the Gilded Age is actually a pejorative phrase coined by Mark Twain.
02:27He and a co-writer wrote a novel called The Gilded Age, a tale for today.
02:33What he was saying was that there's beauty and style, but that can cover up things like greed and racial
02:42inequality and injustice.
02:46At Lemon Chiffon, BK asks,
02:49Were they really giving themselves BBL, a Brazilian butt lift, with those dresses in the Gilded Age?
02:57What's interesting is that no gown could survive on its own.
03:02It was all about the undergarments that gave the shape to a woman's figure.
03:07By the time the Gilded Age came around, it was thought attractive to have a bustle in the back of
03:14your dress.
03:15Well, what exactly is a bustle? Think of a slinky on your lower back side.
03:21It was to make the back of the dress protrude out and then often attach a train to it to
03:28give you a sense of elegance when you moved about a room.
03:31Think about that, ladies.
03:33If you had a lot of mechanics back here, how did you sit down?
03:38And the answer is you could only perch on the edge of a chair.
03:43And here's a question from Cora.
03:46What did they eat at those fancy Gilded Age parties?
03:49Twelve course meals?
03:50What is the weirdest thing on the menu?
03:53These dinners were not short, maybe three hours.
03:57You had silver and crystal and everybody watched to make sure that you used the right utensil.
04:03But what was on your plate?
04:05There are a number of actual menus that exist from places like Delmonico's.
04:10There are also, in some archives, some catering notebooks that actually list the private menus at places like the Astor's
04:20and the Vanderbilt's.
04:22So we actually can see exactly what was served.
04:26Two of the most famous and popular dishes.
04:29One was canvasback duck and the other was terrapin, which is freshwater turtle.
04:36They were expensive and they were hard to get.
04:40One of the strangest was roast peacock.
04:45It was a peacock that you plucked of its feathers, you roasted the body meat, and then you reassembled the
04:53peacock.
04:54The head was stuffed, and all the plumage was reinserted, and that's how it arrived at the table.
05:01Now, I don't know about you, but my favorite part of any dinner party is dessert.
05:05The most popular dessert was ice cream.
05:10At this particular time, we didn't have the enormous freezers that we have today.
05:17And so, to make and to serve ice cream for 400 people, that cost you a lot of money and
05:26a whole lot of ice to keep the ice cream cold.
05:30The other thing that I think is really important to remember, ladies, is that you were strapped into a corset.
05:37So, if you think you even had the possibility of eating a lot, let me tell you right now, you
05:44didn't.
06:01I could pretty much agree with you.
06:03We have another period where there's a great deal of technological advancement.
06:08There's a great deal of wealth.
06:10The first thing we should do is talk about who the robber barons were in the 19th century Gilded Age.
06:16At the top of the pile, you had Rockefeller.
06:19That was oil money.
06:21Vanderbilt was predominantly railroads.
06:24Carnegie was steel.
06:26And then you had J.P. Morgan and Jay Gould.
06:29They were all about money and banking.
06:31Our billionaires of today are creating infrastructure, too.
06:34Now, much of it is digital that arguably make our lives more connected.
06:39But we see examples of tremendous dichotomy of wealth and still instances of social injustice.
06:48And here's a question from Quora.
06:50Did the 1% of the Gilded Age throw wild parties like some of their modern counterparts have?
06:57You bet they did.
06:59And then some.
07:00And you can see that depicted in the HBO series The Gilded Age fairly accurately.
07:06One of the craziest was in 1903, when a very wealthy businessman decided he wanted to entertain his horse friends.
07:16There was a famous dinner on horseback.
07:19That means horses were brought into the dining room, they were circled up, they were saddled, and all of the
07:26guests climbed on horseback, and they were served a multi-course dinner with bottles of champagne in their saddlebags.
07:34In 1883, Alva Vanderbilt, to show off her brand-new chateau on Fifth Avenue, threw an incredible party.
07:43And everybody had to come as a figure from history.
07:47One of the most famous costumes at that ball was Alice Vanderbilt, who showed up in a stunning gold and
07:54silver gown, representing electric light.
07:58Because let's remember, electricity was so new at that point, it was exciting, and she was very much dressing on
08:06a very popular trend.
08:07Often, a party evening began with a night at the opera.
08:12Imagine sitting through a performance at the opera in your grand gown, and then going to Mrs. Astor's, or Mrs.
08:21Vanderbilt's, at around 11 o'clock in the evening.
08:24You'd have a big full buffet, and dancing until about 6 a.m. when you'd have another lavish breakfast, and
08:33then it was time to go home.
08:36And here's a question from Cora.
08:38If Rockefeller lived today, would he be the richest person alive?
08:44It all depends on how you measure money and wealth.
08:48If we look at it in terms of Rockefeller's wealth as a percentage of gross domestic product, in 1913, his
08:56wealth was measured at almost a billion dollars.
09:00So that means Rockefeller's wealth was roughly 2.3% of the entire output of the country.
09:08When we look at Musk's fortune, it's approximately 4% of the gross domestic product today, so he does beat
09:17out Rockefeller.
09:19OneShell asks,
09:20So I've started streaming the Gilded Age.
09:22Am I wrong in thinking that the Russells are the Vanderbilts?
09:26Because similarities, you're not wrong.
09:29When we look at George Russell, there are certainly some Vanderbilt overtones with him,
09:33but there's also another financier of the Gilded Age, Jay Gould, who's right here on the table with me.
09:40We see some influence of Jay Gould in the character of George Russell as well.
09:45One of the characteristics of some of these financiers of the Gilded Age, and particularly Jay Gould, is that they
09:51were ruthless.
09:52They were not afraid to roll the dice, make a fortune, lose a fortune, and roll the dice again.
09:59So when we look at Bertha Russell, there are some similarities, we could certainly say, with Alva Vanderbilt.
10:06Now, Bertha comes from very humble beginnings.
10:08That's not quite true with Alva.
10:11She came from Southern roots, and they had some money.
10:14But what was important is they were outside of society.
10:18Mrs. Astor had not accepted either Bertha Russell or Alva Vanderbilt.
10:23And in order to maneuver at all in Gilded Age society, Mrs. Astor had to give you her stamp of
10:30approval.
10:30So, of course, two of the most well-known families in America's Gilded Age were the Astors and the Vanderbilts.
10:37But what really was the difference between the two of them?
10:40The Astors were a very old family.
10:43John Jacob Astor came here in the 1700s, and he became a fur trader.
10:48The Vanderbilts, well, they came here even earlier, but they were just poor farmers on Staten Island.
10:55They came from the Netherlands, from Derbilt.
10:59That's how they got their name, Vanderbilt.
11:02But it wasn't until the early mid part of the 19th century when Cornelius Vanderbilt started to create a transportation
11:10empire that they amassed their fortune.
11:14So, in perfect Gilded Age society, you had to be an old family with old money that went back as
11:23far as four generations.
11:25The Vanderbilts were an old family with new money.
11:29And there was the problem.
11:31One of the interesting stories here where we can draw some fascinating similarities is in the character of Gladys Russell,
11:38Bertha and George's daughter.
11:40Now, she's married off to a very important and titled British Duke.
11:46Well, Alva and Willie Kay Vanderbilt, they had a daughter, too.
11:50And her name was Consuelo Vanderbilt.
11:54In order to secure her position in society, Alva manipulated a marriage with Consuelo to the Duke of Marlborough.
12:03This was not a very happy marriage.
12:05It certainly wasn't a love match.
12:07It was orchestrated by her mother so that Consuelo would become a duchess.
12:13And New York Gilded Age society liked nothing more, aside from their grand dinner parties, than a title.
12:21Ineffable Twaddle asks,
12:23One bathroom in a four-story house?
12:25Maybe.
12:26One of the things that you have to remember about bathrooms in the Gilded Age is there were fewer of
12:30them than we have today.
12:32Not every bedroom had their own bathroom.
12:34People had to share.
12:36And also, think about it.
12:37When you went to a grand ball with your ball gowns, there was no ladies' room or men's room.
12:45So that meant you had to be very careful about what you ate and what you drank.
12:49For gentlemen, there was sometimes a chamber pot behind a screen in that men's smoking room.
12:54And that made things a lot easier.
12:56If you're a lady, it was a little more difficult.
12:59There was a famous story when Consuelo Vanderbilt marries the Duke of Marlborough and she moves to Blenheim Palace.
13:07She said,
13:07But in all this palace, there's not one habitable room.
13:11And one of the challenges were the bathrooms.
13:14Often, there'd only be one on a floor.
13:17And there's a story she tells of all of the maids lining up so that their mistresses would not lose
13:24a place in line to use the bathroom.
13:29PsychologicalRoof85 asks,
13:36There was nothing more seductive in Gilded Age high society than having a European aristocratic title.
13:44A lot of the European aristocrats had titles, but not enough money.
13:48So in that way, it was a perfect marriage.
13:51A young, beautiful, well-educated American heiress could marry a sort of impoverished European aristocrat.
14:02The American family got a title for their daughter and the European aristocrat got a lot of money to top
14:09up their coffers.
14:10When we think of the great British country estates, they were essentially working farms and they got their money by
14:16actually producing crops and selling them.
14:19In the 19th century, America became a great producer of wheat and was able to ship that produce to Europe
14:28at much lower prices.
14:31Consequently, nobody wanted to buy the British grain.
14:35And it took a lot of money to maintain these estates and these country houses.
14:39So the easiest fix was to marry a wealthy American heiress and get your money that way.
15:01Historians often disagree as to when the Gilded Age actually started and ended, but to me, it would start around
15:071870 post-Civil War.
15:09There was a tremendous amount of wealth being created as the infrastructure of the country was being born.
15:17There was a lot of money in society that was being spent with little restraint.
15:21It really began to wane and end around 1900.
15:26We had a new president, Teddy Roosevelt.
15:29The progressive era was coming in.
15:31Income tax was being enforced.
15:34All of those great fortunes were starting to wane.
15:38DeepLand3 asks,
15:40What was the estimated time for a Gilded Age woman to get ready to go to a charity event or
15:46visit a friend?
15:47It was all about your hair.
15:50Great Gilded Age hairstyles took a long time.
15:54For example, if you were going to go to a ball in the evening, you would have to have the
16:00hairdresser come to your house maybe as early as 8 o'clock in the morning and dress your hair, maybe
16:09weave in some of the jewels, and then you had to sit all day long without moving before you could
16:17put on your gown and your furs and the rest of your jewelry and go to the ball.
16:22Now, no Gilded Age woman could get into a ball gown by herself.
16:27There was the bustle.
16:29There was the corset.
16:30And that was another subliminal message of wealth in society.
16:34You needed maids to help you get into your clothes.
16:39Someone like Mrs. Vanderbilt would have a lady's maid, and that was who took care of your clothes and your
16:46jewelry and your hair.
16:47But there were other maids that took care of the ironing and the linen and all the other aspects of
16:52the house that were handled by butlers and footmen.
16:55One statistic that's truly fascinating was when Henry Clay Frick built his house on Fifth Avenue.
17:02There were three of them, and there were 30 servants employed in the house.
17:07From the No Stupid Questions subreddit, I am watching the HBO series The Gilded Age.
17:13Where are all these palatial single-family Manhattan homes today, and what area of Manhattan is that supposed to be?
17:22The area that you asked about is the Upper East Side.
17:26Central Park was new, and anybody that could wanted to live along the park.
17:32As we got to the 20th century, it simply became impossible to have these mansions function.
17:40Many of these palatial mansions were, in fact, torn down.
17:43One of the grandest stood on the site of where you find Bergdorf Goodman today on the corner of 57th
17:49Street and Fifth Avenue.
17:50That was the mansion of Cornelius Vanderbilt II.
17:54At one time, that was the grandest, most palatial mansion in the city.
17:59A number of organizations took over some of the mansions.
18:03For example, the Warburg family.
18:06Their mansion is still there on Fifth Avenue.
18:08It now houses the Jewish Museum, the Ukrainian Institute.
18:12That's one of the original Gilded Age mansions, so a number of them still exist.
18:20Ctai8730 asks,
18:21Okay, but why is no one talking about Mrs. Astor and her power over society?
18:26There is a lot to say about Mrs. Astor.
18:29This was a portrait done by Carolus Durant.
18:32Mrs. Astor is painted here in a black velvet gown.
18:35That was one of her favorites.
18:36But that still doesn't explain why she had so much power over Gilded Age society.
18:41By the 1870s, after the Civil War, Mrs. Astor saw that society was changing.
18:48The old money was still there, but there was new money coming in.
18:53And she thought, I can help create a new American society.
18:58She had a henchman named Ward McAllister that we see in the HBO Gilded Age series.
19:05And between Ward McAllister and Mrs. Astor, they decided who was in and who was out.
19:12So often people talk about the Gilded Age 400, and the only proper people were the 400 people that could
19:19fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom.
19:22Well, that's a little bit of mythology.
19:25Ward McAllister, in 1892, actually published a list in the newspaper of the families that he thought were the appropriate
19:34families of Gilded Age society.
19:36And it wasn't 400. It was barely 300.
19:40Yes, these were grand ballrooms.
19:43But think about it. 400 people dancing all at the same time.
19:48I don't think anyone ever actually counted.
19:53Fidel asks, I'm a middle-class man living in New York City in the 1880s.
19:57Where can I get a bite to eat?
20:00There were several restaurants that were starting to become very, very popular.
20:04Rector's was known as a lobster palace, where you could get all kinds of wonderful seafood.
20:10Luchau's was a German-inspired beer hall.
20:13One of your choices was for good New York oysters.
20:17Now, there's still a delicacy in New York today, but in the 19th century, they were everywhere.
20:23And they were much less expensive than they are today.
20:26In fact, tourists would come to New York in the 19th century from Europe, and they were shocked by the
20:32size of the oysters and how succulent they were.
20:36You could buy them in restaurants.
20:37You could get them from stands on the corner.
20:40And the oysters here in New York were local oysters, and they had a taste all their own.
20:59If you were a Gilded Age gentleman, having a yacht was one of the most ostentatious ways that you could
21:06display your money.
21:08Also, men loved to race, and there were horse tracks up in northern Manhattan where men could actually race each
21:15other.
21:16So just like today, anybody with a significant amount of money often wants to have a second home.
21:22In addition to your townhouse, you wanted to have a country house, and the place to have your country house
21:27was often Newport, Rhode Island.
21:30Newport became a famous resort among the Gilded Age elite, and they built palace after palace after palace to entertain
21:37each other.
21:38Again, another way to show off your money and hopefully find a husband for your daughter.
21:44And here's a question from the History subreddit.
21:47Is this what trending looked like in the 19th century?
21:51And we have an image of one of the newspaper offices, the New York Journal, with the headlines splayed across
21:58the front.
21:59You'd often find on street corners, newsboys with newspapers held up or signs proclaiming the latest news.
22:06Newspaper publishers like Hearst and Pulitzer vied for that dollar.
22:11It was all about making it as sensational as possible, which led to the rise of what was called yellow
22:17journalism, which is scandalous.
22:20Maybe not always 100% correct, but it sold papers and made money.
22:25There was a fair number of gossip in the press, too.
22:29There was a publication called Town Topics that was pretty salacious and pretty scandalous that reported what our Gilded Age
22:371% was up to and just who they were up to it with.
22:49That would involve Stanford White, who was the most famous architect of the Gilded Age, according to many people.
22:56On a sultry evening in 1906 on the top of Madison Square Garden, which at the time was actually at
23:04Madison Square.
23:05It was after a performance of the theater.
23:07He was actually murdered at point-blank range by a man named Harry K. Thaw, who had married a woman
23:15named Evelyn Nesbitt, with whom, when she was quite young, Stanford White had a relationship.
23:22The result of this is the tabloids ate it up.
23:26The trial, the ensuing trial, all of this, even down to what Harry K. Thaw was served in prison for
23:33dinner, was covered by the newspapers.
23:37Any concentrate, 1922 asks, what did they do all day?
23:42You didn't have a phone, so you had to write letters.
23:45Business proceeded much more slowly because you had to send things like telegrams.
23:50One of the things families did was to use a stereograph.
23:54Photography was becoming so much more popular, and these were fascinating.
23:59The way it worked is you had a card with double images, maybe of scenes of Europe, maybe of here
24:04in New York in Central Park, and you slipped it in.
24:07And magically, the two images came together and created a 3D image.
24:13And as technology began to change, things like listening to music at home changed, too.
24:19You didn't have to have an orchestra in your ballroom just to listen to good music.
24:24You actually could start to have the beginnings of a phonograph, and these cylinders were becoming popular that you could
24:33actually put on, and you could hear sounds and voices and music.
24:38They're a little heavy, and when you look at them, they have these fine lines, just like a wrecker did
24:44once upon a time before we even got to compact discs.
24:48So think of this as a Gilded Age compact disc.
24:53Whole Vodka asks,
24:54Is the Gilded Age depiction of Black wealth accurate?
24:58Yes.
24:59One of the most exciting and fascinating things to me about the HBO Gilded Age series is we actually see
25:06the storyline of Peggy Scott and her family.
25:09The show has been meticulous in actually presenting this story.
25:14So in the first part of the 19th century, the Black population was much more integrated, and it centered in
25:19Lower Manhattan.
25:20By the end of the 19th century, the move was out to Brooklyn, and the area around Fort Greene and
25:25other neighborhoods and communities of Brooklyn became areas of Black wealth.
25:30Scholarship in this really began around 2012 with a landmark book called Black Gotham by the scholar Dr. Carla Peterson,
25:38who actually, in researching her own family, uncovered a story of a wealthy Black elite that created this community.
25:47And that story had been lost for so, so many years.
25:51The story of the Black population in New York sort of went from enslavement to the beginning of the Harlem
25:56Renaissance.
25:57And now we have a much fuller story to tell.
26:02And another question from Cora, why were rich people so obsessed with the opera?
26:08How did you get an invitation?
26:10As we can see in some of the scenes from the show, when you went to the opera, everyone was
26:16looking at you.
26:18We have to look at the structure of a 19th century theater.
26:23One of the most important aspects of that were the box seats.
26:27Who doesn't want a box seat today?
26:28Well, the box seats in the opera house had some of the worst views of the stage, but they had
26:35the best views for the audience to see you.
26:39It wasn't so much about the opera being performed on the stage.
26:44Jewish Comics Queen asks,
26:46I really love the show, but where are all the Jewish characters?
26:51There were great Jewish families of wealth.
26:54And famous, well-known financiers, Otto Kahn, who contributed greatly to the artistic life of the city.
27:00The story of Jacob Schiff, who was an immigrant.
27:04And through his financial dealings, he funded so much of the settlement house movement, which actually helped immigrants establish their
27:12lives.
27:13There are so many entwined, fascinating stories of Jewish New York at the end of the 19th century, and I
27:19hope that they will be told.
27:21These are all the questions that we have time for today.
27:24Thank you for watching Gilded Age support.