Gilded Mansions

The Gilded Age (1865–1918) saw the sudden rise of America's first High Society, including such prominent families as the Astors, Whitneys, and Vanderbilts. As an aristocracy based on fortunes recently acquired, these families endeavored to live like Europe's blue-blooded nobility, shedding Puritan restraint as they joyously flaunted their new wealth—especially where their homes were concerned.

They erected French chateaus and Italian palazzos on New York's Fifth Avenue, at Newport, and elsewhere, often taking inspiration from Parisian styles of the Second Empire. They rejected more modest American styles just as they rejected middle-class society, and for interior decoration they turned to such artisans as Tiffany, Herter Brothers, and Allard's of Paris.

Immensely readable and illuminated with 250 stunning color and black-and-white illustrations, this is the fascinating story of America's first millionaire society, the way they lived and partied, and the lush artistic and cultural legacy they established.

A lavishly illustrated history of the opulent art and architecture of the Gilded Age.

The Barnes & Noble Review

For those readers with a penchant for the decorative arts and architecture, it will be hard to resist peeking beyond the glossy cover of Wayne Craven's Gilded Mansions. For those not so sure, each chapter of this book is prefaced by a quote so tantalizing, you can't help but be pulled in. Take this little opinion, dressed up with fact: "New York ranks fourth in size among the cities of the earth. Architecturally it ranks nowhere. Fifth Avenue consists for the most part of innumerable brownstone platitudes, all depressingly alike. The incredible monotony is the only character this great street can boast," published by LIFE in 1892. But the Gilded Age (1865–1918) changed all that. Craven, Winterthur Professor of Art History, Emeritus, shows and tells us how Whitneys, Vanderbilts, and Astors alike strove to change the landscape by outdoing each other, one marvelous French château and Italian palazzo at a time. The well-researched text provides thorough historical context for a fascinating tale that begins when keeping up with the Joneses literally meant following Mary Mason Jones (aunt of Edith Wharton), who boldly moved "way uptown" to 55th Street's Marble Row (constructed entirely from Ohio limestone, with nary a brown brick in sight). Copiously illustrated with 250 photographs, as well as delicious asides such as how the Vanderbilt children were viewed as "social climbing arrivistes" by the dowager Mrs. Astor, it documents how utterly America's first millionaires rejected utilitarianism and all things bourgeois by snubbing each other and stuffing their lofty rooms with carved cabinetry, silk screens, and commissioned portraits. It's a rich volume indeed, "its splendor akin to the gorgeous dreams of Oriental fantasy." --Lydia Dishman

Wayne Craven is the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Professor of Art History, Emeritus, at the University of Delaware. He is the author of American Art: History and Culture and Stanford White: Decorator in Opulence. He lives in Newark, Delaware.