“Slumming parties to be the rage this winter.“ New York Times, 1884 In the 1880s, the gilded shine of Fifth Avenue’s spectacular mansions contrasted sharply with the squalid living conditions of the New York poor, easily described as “slums.” Such was the difference between these two worlds that visiting the impoverished neighborhoods by the wealthy…
Category: Gilded Age
Tweed Courthouse – a Building that Cost More than Alaska
Not known for its architectural merits, the Tweed Courthouse stands as a monument to the enormous grid and epic corruption. The Tweed Courthouse was a pet project of Boss Tweed, who, without ever holding an official city government position, controlled just about every office in the city from transportation to the press. He was an…
Temple Court – One Spectacular Office Building
The stunning Queen Anne–style Temple Court building, designed by James M. Farnsworth, was initially called the Kelly Building after the name of its developer, Eugene Kelly. It pioneered a new, developing concept of an office building. Most of its offices were occupied by lawyers, giving it the name “Temple Court” after London’s Temple legal district. A…
Formal Dinner… on Horseback
How would you celebrate the opening of your stables? A dinner, perhaps? Here is how Cornelius Kingsley Garrison Billings, an American industrialist tycoon, philanthropist, and a noted horseman and horse breeder did it. On March 28, 1903, he gave a lavish 14-course dinner for a small select group of people, namely thirty-five members of the…
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