Mansions, parties, and fine dining: Vintage photos show how America's wealthiest business tycoons lived it up during the Gilded Age
James Pasley
- In the late 1800s, tycoons amassed huge fortunes in America, and they weren't shy about showing it off.
- They spent conspicuously, from fancy clothes to European mansions to lavish masked balls.
The adage goes that money can't buy happiness, but during the Gilded Age, it certainly bought a lot.
From the end of the Civil War until President Theodore Roosevelt began to impose limitations on America's wealthy tycoons, a select few grew enormously rich. Often they were bankers or those who profited off of a number of commercial industries, including railways, oil, and steel.
At the same time, the newly rich sought to spend. They wanted to be seen spending more than their rivals, and they wanted to be treated as equals by those with old money.
Here's how the tycoons of the Gilded Age spent their money.
In the years after the Civil War in 1865, a few Americans, including Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan, began to make huge sums of money. They were bankers or tycoons who controlled oil, railroads, steel, and other key industries.
Sources: WTTW, Town and Country
Their fortunes grew rapidly, and by 1897, America's 4,000 richest families — making up less than 1% of the country — had as much wealth as 11.6 million other families combined.
Source: Time
But they didn't just make fortunes — they spent fortunes, too. It was a period of conspicuous spending, one that Mark Twain dubbed the "Gilded Age."
Historian Nell Irvin Painter told Time it wasn't called "the golden age" for a reason — gilded meant the glitz and glamour was covering something not as shiny.
"It's the shiny exterior and the rot underneath," he said.
Source: Time
One of the defining features of the period was showing off. The rich flaunted their wealth for everyone to see. As author Esther Crain told The Wall Street Journal, it was all about one-upmanship.
Sources: Time, Wall Street Journal, History.com
For those who were self-made, the way into the upper-echelons was through spending up, and to do so, they looked at how European royalty lived for inspiration.
Sources: Time, Wall Street Journal, History.com
There was a visible difference between old money families and the newly rich. Across the country, especially in New York City, those with old money sought to keep their world to themselves, while the newly rich were busy building themselves extravagant mansions.
Source: Vogue
Alva and William K. Vanderbilt, who were considered nouveau riche, built a mansion called the "Petit Chateau" in New York City. It was considered garish by other elites. The mansion was made of white limestone — whereas brownstone was in fashion at the time — and occupied close to a block of Fifth Avenue.
It cost $3 million to build, the equivalent of $83.5 million today, and was demolished in 1926.
Sources: Vogue, Vogue, Wall Street Journal
Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife Alice built an even more ostentatious mansion on 57th street in New York for about $3.375 million, which is the equivalent of $95 million today.
It was called the "Buckingham Palace of Fifth Avenue" and was made of red brick and limestone.
The mansion originally had about 50 rooms, but the couple bought neighboring townhouses, tore them down, and expanded the mansion until it had about 91 rooms.
It was later replaced by the Bergdorf Goodman department store.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Not too far away, on 73rd St, steel tycoon Charles M. Schwab built himself a mansion made of steel, limestone, and granite. It had 75 rooms, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and three elevators.
But perhaps most impressively he had an organ concealed by a tapestry which was woven by 100 Flemish women who had come to the US for that sole purpose.
Source: Wall Street Journal
But the mansions weren't restricted to New York City. In 1878, railroad mogul John Work Garrett bought his son Harrison and his family another famous mansion with 48 rooms in Baltimore.
They displayed items and antiques they acquired on their worldwide travels, including German porcelain, Tiffany glass, and Japanese inro.
Sources: Washington Post, Baltimore Heritage
Their library was filled with 8,000 volumes, including original books by Audubon and Shakespeare. It had a chandelier and a table with candelabras.
Sources: Washington Post, Baltimore Heritage
But building and buying mansions was only one way the newly wealthy would spend money in the Gilded Age. Every year, socialites would go to Europe to keep up with the latest fashions. The women shopped in Paris, while the men shopped in London.
Source: History.com
They also hosted over-the-top parties. One socialite wife married to American railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish hosted a dinner party for her dog, where she dressed him up in a $15,000 diamond collar.
Source: PBS
Another millionaire named CKG Billings loved horses so much that his dinner party was held on horseback inside a fancy New York restaurant called Sherry's.
Dinner trays were attached to the saddles, and champagne was enjoyed through straws from bottles housed in saddlebags.
Source: New York Times
Usually though, dining happened in proper seats, without animals, at fancy restaurants like Delmonico's.
Source: New York Post
During this era, there was one diner who was famed for how much he could eat. Diamond Jim Brady, who made his millions selling railroad supplies, reportedly started his day with pancakes, steaks, chops, eggs, muffins, grits, bread, fried potatoes, and orange juice.
Brady would have morning tea, afternoon tea, six or seven servings of dinner, and dessert, but there were varying accounts about how much he really ate.
In 2008, The New York Times found reports stating that doctors had said his stomach had become six times larger than normal.
Regardless of the exact amount he ate, it is undisputed that he ate a whole lot.
Source: New York Times
Socialites hosted impressive parties, too. One of the most well-known socialites was Caroline Astor, who was known for her infamous "List of 400," which consisted of guests from 25 socially acceptable families, designed to keep the "right" people in the upper society and the "wrong" ones out.
It was also the exact amount of people she could fit in her ballroom.
Vogue society writer Frank Crowninshield described Astor's taste as "always for old families, old ways, old servants, old operas, old lace, and old friends."
"She tried always to keep society in bounds, to see that it was decorous, elegant, and select," Crowninshield wrote.
Astor's parties were in her ballroom that was topped with a dome made of stained-glass and its walls were hung with about 100 paintings.
Sources: Vogue, New York Times, Wall Street Journal
And yet, like the era itself, Astor was later revealed to be less wealthy than people thought. After she died, her goods were auctioned and people discovered her dinnerware was gold-plated, not solid gold.
Source: Town and Country
Society gatekeepers like Astor made social mobility difficult for the newly rich, including Alva Vanderbilt, whose father-in-law Cornelius Vanderbilt, a shipping and railroad mogul, was known as a rough and crass man.
Sources: Vogue, Wall Street Journal, MCNY
But Alva didn't give up. She had one seemingly unlimited resource — money — and in 1883, she threw a masked ball, which cost about $250,000 (about $6 million today). She spent $65,000 on champagne alone.
She invited 1,200 guests, but purposefully didn't invite Caroline Astor's daughter unless she came with her mother.
Caroline came, as she hoped, and Alva had strengthened her place in society.
Sources: Vogue, Wall Street Journal, MCNY
The newly rich displayed their fortunes by attending the opera, which was gatekept by old money families. In New York, a group with inherited wealth controlled who could get tickets to the Academy of Music, an opera house, and made it impossible for others to see a show.
In the end, a group of newly rich men banded together to open the Metropolitan Opera so they too could see some opera.
Sources: New York Times, Architectural Digest
Like the Metropolitan opera house, these tycoons did some good with their fortunes for the country during the Gilded Age. Philanthropists funded museums, orchestras, and opera groups.
Industrialist Andrew Carnegie echoed the sentiment, saying if a rich man died rich, he "died disgraced."
But ironically, some tycoons also made their money off corruption and at the expense of the working class.
Source: USA Today
By the 1910s, the Gilded Age was coming to an end. The age of tycoons was weakening as newspapers exposed corruption and President Theodore Roosevelt imposed new limits on corporate power and brought in tax and political reforms.
It would take a few more years before the Gilded Age fully ended, but the days of ostentatious eating, spending, and partying were over.
Sources: Town and Country, History.com
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