From Breakers to Ballrooms: A Gilded Age History Journey

Scott: 00:00:05

Today, our main destination is Newport, Rhode island, home to some of the most magnificent mansions of the late 19th century. Mansions like the breakers stand as a testament to the ambition and affluence of the Vanderbilt family.

Constructed in the late: 1890

The Vanderbilts, along with other prominent families, play pivotal roles in shaping America's industrial and cultural landscape.

Their summer cottages in Newport on the coast or in New York overlooking the Hudson river, were not merely homes, but symbols of their social standing and influence. As we explore these historic estates, we'll delve into the stories of the families who built them and the legacy they left behind.

Join us as we uncover the splendor and significance of the Gilded Age. Welcome to Talk with History. I am your host, Scott, here with my wife and historian Jen.

Jenn: 00:01:24

Hello.

Scott: 00:01:25

On this podcast we give you insights to our history Inspired World Travels, YouTube channel Journey and examine history through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers and the history lovers out there.

Jen, I haven't asked for this in a while, but for those listening we, our audience has been growing and so for those of you who might be relatively new to the podcast, welcome. We have a joke that we say on here every once in a while there.

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Jenn: 00:02:33

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Scott: 00:03:09

And I will say one more thing. If you check out our podcast Show Notes, the first link that. That is in any podcast right now, that can change because it's dynamic.

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Jenn: 00:04:03

Yeah. Your own little Indiana Jones crusade.

Scott: 00:04:06

That's right. All right, Jen. So the Gilded Age, the Great Gatsby, all the stuff.

So you've been traveling with American cruise lines because you're working as a historian for them.

Jenn: 00:04:20

Yeah.

Scott: 00:04:21

And you had the opportunity to get up to.

To both Newport, and some people might not realize, also up in New York on the Hudson river, there are some kind of quote unquote, gilded aid mansions up there.

So let's talk about the Gilded Age, and let's focus a little bit more on what people really know, which is mansions like the breakers and the Marble House and stuff like that.

Jenn: 00:04:40

So for just for introduction, the Gilded Age and the Great Gatsby, that time are two separate times.

Scott: 00:04:47

Okay.

Jenn: 00:04:48

Gilded Age is really: 1870

Scott: 00:04:58

So the Great Gatsby is more like kind of flapper era, like, 20s.

Jenn: 00:05:02

Yes, that's the roaring 20s. But now they're living in, like, the same houses that have been built, and they're.

Era, and that is right around: 1900

But that leads into the roaring twenties.

Scott: 00:05:25

Gotcha.

Jenn: 00:05:25

So it's like. It's step stones, like so.

Scott: 00:05:27

So people may connect it. People may mentally associate the Great Gatsby and even the movie in the book with the Gilded Age.

But like you said, it's really that was born on the shoulders of what, what is the true Gilded Age, which what you'll talk about.

Jenn: 00:05:41

Yeah. So like we always say, history is connected. So the Gilded Age, like I said it is, it comes out of the Civil War, right.

Think of this time after great devastation when America rebuilds itself. And in this rebuilding you have people who kind of emerge as the leaders of that. The railroad tycoons, the oil tycoons, the steel tycoons.

And because they can corner the stock markets and they can monopolize the supplies of those things, they become opulently rich.

And so you get what they call robber barons because the robber barons are basically robbing the American people because they're cornering the markets in these things.

Scott: 00:06:23

And these are long before we had regulations for this kind of stuff. Right.

this era all the way from the: 1870

Jenn: 00:06:44

And you might think there's names very much associated with this. The Rockefellers think of oil, the Vanderbilts think of railroads.

The Carnegie's, which is, if you're from Pittsburgh, we say Carnegie instead of Carnegie. Carnegie's steel tycoons. So you're getting these.

And JP Morgan banking, so you're getting these men who are taking these markets and taking all of it. So when you think of Rockefeller, he's taking not only the oil refineries, but he's taking the way you transport oil.

He's buying all of it so he can corner the whole market. And that like you said, that can't be done today. But that's how they get this opulent money. So with this opulent money comes a show of it.

And it's usually their wives and, and the society difference that they're trying to show. And that comes in the form of purchasing homes and real estate and clothing.

And when you think of things in America that still exists today, Rockefeller center, think of the Carnegie Libraries. They had so much wealth that they wanted to show it in different ways besides building these opulent mansions just to vacation in.

They wanted to build big skyscrapers in the middle of New York City. Right. They wanted to show their wealth in other ways. And so they still exist today.

ike I said, this is the time.: 1870

Progressive Era is a lot of that pushback against these men. Unions, child labor.

They're like, you're making so much money off of us and it's killing us because they're getting such a difference now in upper class and lower class that we need to put some regulation on this. And so think progressive error is what's going to end this Gilded Age.

Scott: 00:08:39

So. And that too. Right. You'll see it in a lot of kind of like, like you said, the social movements. So women's right to vote, Prohibition.

That's like you said. It's. It's a reaction to what had been happening over the past few decades coming out of. Of this era.

Jenn: 00:08:55

rk Twain will write a book in: 1873

And so in the: 1920

The time gets coined after the fact, because Mark Twain will write a book as he's witnessing this time in America, watching this. So that's where the name comes from. Why do people go to Newport? Why do these mansions get built in Newport, Rhode Island?

Because it's along the water. It's not a long ride from New York.

And when we talk about New York City in the summer, what happens is you're building all these buildings with these roads in the summer, and the heat gets trapped up along these roads and inside these buildings. And it's so hot in New York. This is the time before air conditioning. Right. They're stopping the breeze, all these buildings.

So they need to get out of the city. And so they get out to places along the coast and build their homes. And that is where Newport comes into play.

Scott: 00:10:07

And it's funny too, because you had never been to Newport until. And it wasn't even American cruise cruise lines the first time you got up there.

You actually went up there to visit me at one, at one point in time, because the Navy has had a presence there for quite some time. Think coastal, kind of key spot. And so actually the Navy has its war college and a bunch of kind of training centers up there.

And so I've actually been to Newport numerous times, more times than I can count throughout the course of my career in the military. And you actually came up to visit me a couple years Ago, you brought the kids up, did a road trip, came up, and that was your first time in Newport.

And so it's been fun that you got to go. You've been back a couple times now with American Cruise Line, so that you can do these. These kind of explore these gilded Aid age mansions.

Jenn: 00:10:51

Yeah. So think of Newport, like, again, along the coast. It's also very much has a lot of naval history. This is where Oliver Hazard Perry is from.

. He's the hero of the War of: 1812

And then you have that beautiful coastline where people want to build their home.

Scott: 00:11:12

It's gorgeous.

Jenn: 00:11:12

Get that breeze. And so now it's called the Cliff Walk. And you can walk behind all of these homes. But the first person to really come up there was Mrs. Aster.

So if you watch the Gilded Age, you know who Mrs. Aster is. She is really the pinnacle of society. And you can think about the Titanic. Her son is killed on the Titanic, and he's the richest man on the boat.

So Mrs. Asteroid, she comes to Newport first, and they buy a home there. It's called Beechwood. And you can't visit it today. It's privately owned. But they build.

of Beechwood is built between: 1852

Because what is happening in New York with these Gilded Age elite is they call themselves the 400. They're the 400 elite families, elite people of this society. They go to the opera, they make themselves scenes. They let.

They let their wealth be seen. Right. And so to entertain the 400 in these mansions, they need to renovate the ballrooms, as you can imagine, to hold 400 people.

Scott: 00:12:28

So that. So that's where the initial push for some of the size of these places came from.

Jenn: 00:12:33

Exactly.

Scott: 00:12:33

So that they could say, hey, invite all their friends out, essentially invite high society from New York.

Jenn: 00:12:39

Yes.

Scott: 00:12:39

So they could host out there. And that's how it kicked off.

Jenn: 00:12:42

That's exactly how it's interesting. Because a show of this wealth, the women, the wives show this wealth by these elaborate parties that they throw.

And they throw these elaborate parties in Manhattan, but they throw these elaborate parties in Newport when they summer.

And if you're going to hold 400 people in your home for an elaborate party, because you want to go to these parties, if in society you want to be seen, you need a huge ballroom and you need a huge dining room. So Beechwood is the first one Mrs. Aster's parties come to be known.

And then you get the first Vanderbilts are going to build the marbles right beside Mrs. Aster. Now, the Marbles is built more by what you would consider George Russell's character in the movie New Money. And so they're building the marbles.

It's an. It's an opulent place. It cost 11 million to build at the time. It can also hold the 400. But then you have his brother who looks at this.

So if this is built by William Vanderbilt and Alva, that's who is the Russells are based off of.

Scott: 00:13:46

And it's called the Marble House because it's built all out of marble. All out of marble, which is crazy.

Jenn: 00:13:50

And you can visit the marbles today. But his brother gets a look of it. So Cornelius Vanderbilt ii. So you think the Vanderbilt fortune is built by Cornelius Vanderbilt.

He's the one who's building this huge railroad dynasty. This is his grandson, Cornelius Vanderbilt ii.

He looks at their wives, he looks at Beechwood, he looks at the marbles, and he goes, oh, yeah, I'm gonna build the Breakers.

Scott: 00:14:17

Oh, and man, we're gonna show all the B roll and footage that.

Jen, if you're listening to this, I would highly encourage you guys, after you're finished listening, go in the podcast show notes, because I'll link to some of the videos. It. This place blows my mind.

Jenn: 00:14:33

It's amazing. Of all the mansions, again, the Cliff Walk, all these Gilded Age mansions of Newport, the Breakers is the creme de la creme.

It is the jewel in the crown. It is the most beautiful place. It is 60,000 square feet of living space, and then 140 square feet of area.

Scott: 00:14:52

140,000.

Jenn: 00:14:53

140,000. Yes, 140,000. And what's significant about that is you can promenade there. So that is, again, you want to be seen, right?

You want to wear your best on the lawn that overlooks the water.

And I show you that whole area where people would dress in their best and sit out and picnic and walk around with their parasols and just be seen in society during the summer.

Scott: 00:15:18

And the thing is, too, is like the breakers is. Is literally, in my mind, the quintessential example, a Gilded Age mansion, whatever you picture a gilded aid mansion to look like.

And as Jen's describing, you know, these families leaving New York and coming out there and promenading and hosting balls and dinners and doing all this stuff, pick, pick whatever you picture in your mind the breakers is probably that and then.

Jenn: 00:15:43

Some and then some. It's magnificent. Yeah.

Scott: 00:15:46

And inside it's just crazy.

Jenn: 00:15:47

I walked, right, and you walked straight into the ballroom. And it is opulent and ginormous. Two stories. There's all these chandeliers, painted ceilings. It is beautiful, it's opulent.

And it's built between: 1893

The Cornelius II builds the Breakers. Like they're all competing with each other, right? They want to. They all want to show their wealth. They all want to throw these parties.

They all want to flex their muscle as far as, like how. What they can afford. But in the breakers is the creme de la creme. It is open for people to visit and tour. It is beautiful. It is along the Cliff Walk.

And you might be asking, what's the Cliff Walk? That's what we had done when we first visited Newport. It's this walk about. Along the backyards of all of these mansions. It's three and a half miles.

It gets. It's an easy walk. And then it gets a little bit more difficult. And by difficult I mean there's rocks and things in the way.

But it is still pretty flat. And you can walk the backyards of all these mansions and it's open to the public, so it's really great.

And at one point these families tried to shut that down because I had always been there because they didn't want all these gawkers looking in, although I'm sure they really did. But they didn't want all these gawkers looking in their backyards and seeing their parties and being a nuisance.

But a judge in town said it's always been public, it's always going to stay public.

Scott: 00:17:16

Yeah, it's pretty cool. And even for.

For Navy folks like myself who go out to Newport for training or I go help instruct courses and stuff like that, sometimes that's a very common thing for. For people to just go do because you can park near the beach. There's.

There's plenty of beach down there and you can just walk right up there and you go do a nice, nice easy walk. It's beautiful and it's. It's a very common kind of touristy thing to do.

Jenn: 00:17:42

And then I visited the Elms. So if you're a fan of the show like I am, the Elms is Julian Fellows favorite mansion there In Newport.

And Julian Fellows is the creator of the Gilded Age, also the creator of Downton Abbey. Think of the Gilded Age as the American equivalent to Downton Abbey, because this kind of wealth was happening at such a fast pace in America.

And it was the equivalent to these big manners in these big homes. And so they were showing this upstairs, downstairs setting, same kind of thing as Downton Abbey.

So the Elms is really what is in the show, the Russell's Newport summer home. And so when I went to visit the Elms, it's not on the Cliff walk, it's not on the water.

d, still built the same time,: 1899

It has more of a French chateau look to it. But they extensively use the Elms for the show. So if you are a fan of the Gilded Age, that's why I brought you to the Elms.

Because there's so many rooms used for the show. The staircase is used for the show. And so I wanted to show you a lot of how they're reusing the real places to show the Gilded Age today.

And if you just watched the last season, season three, the end of it, the big ball is at the Elms. They're in the backyard of the Elms or in the. The ballroom of the Elms. So I wanted to show all of that.

And that's also a place you can visit in Newport. It's open to the public, and it's really great. You can buy these tickets. You can buy one mansion, you can buy two mansions.

So I recommend buying the two. And you can just go whenever you'd like. Because I did the breakers in the morning and I did the Elms in the afternoon.

Scott: 00:19:33

Yeah. Now, Newport, as we mentioned in the. In the intro, Newport wasn't the only spot for folks to build these large summer cottages, quote, unquote.

The other one that you recently got to visit was actually along the Hudson.

Jenn: 00:19:51

It's on the Hudson. So I went to Lynnhurst. And Lynnhurst is in Tarrytown, if you think of Sleepy Hollow.

What is interesting about Lyndhurst is it can be used not just for the summer, because you can take a boat or the railroad right from Tarrytown into the city. And it really is an hour boat ride. So this was the home of Jay Gould, and Jay Gould is the inspiration for George Russell. He is who George Russell.

Russell is supposed to be. And George Russell is probably one of the main characters of the Gilded Age.

Scott: 00:20:25

Yeah, that's the kind of the. The new money guy.

Jenn: 00:20:27

The new money guy and the one who's working the stock market, which is all the things Jay Gould really did. Now, Jay Gould used this house during the week like it wasn't just a summer home, because he could get right on a boat.

He didn't want to take the railroad because he didn't want to support Vanderbilt. So he got on his boat, and his boat was an hour ride, so.

Scott: 00:20:47

He would just commute that way.

Jenn: 00:20:49

And he did that pretty much daily. So think of Lyn Hurst as a. A Gilded Age mansion, but not really a summer mansion. It was more like, get outside of the city.

Health, clean air, good breeze. That's why he was living outside.

Scott: 00:21:05

I mean, same kind of money that they dumped into this place, though.

Jenn: 00:21:07

Yeah.

Scott: 00:21:07

Because the. The grounds around it were. Were huge. You talk about specifically in the video inside. Now, we couldn't take video inside.

You had to take some pictures, but you took some. A lot of good pictures. They, instead of importing and building with marble inside, they.

They did some, like, faux kind of fake marble thing that was actually more expensive.

Jenn: 00:21:27

Yes. So they had gone to Europe and seen. That's what the Europeans were doing. They were doing, like, this, their painting, to look like marble.

And it's more expensive and more time consuming to do, but they. It's a great show of wealth. And so when they got back to America, they're like, we're gonna do that.

So if you walk into the foyer, that's how the whole thing looks. Even though it's all plaster, it looks like marble, stacked marble. And they've even painted the ceiling to look like wood. And so it's. It.

You can tell it's like, a little different. And it would have cost less to use the real stuff. But this is, again, a show. We have so much money. Let's just do the more difficult thing. And so the.

me time. Lynhurst is built in: 1838

Scott: 00:22:14

Okay.

Jenn: 00:22:14

And it's first owned by the New York City mayor, Paulding. And Paulding is a relation to one of those men who catch Major Andre. There's three men who catch Major Andre. One of them is Paulding in Terrytown.

So the New York City mayor is connected to Terrytown. Right. So he builds his. This is his summer home. Then it's sold to Merchant and George Merritt, and then it's sold to Jay Gould.

But it has this huge Gothic revival look to it. It looks very like a castle in medieval times. So it's been used for movies like Dark Shadows. It's been used for different soap operas.

Scott: 00:22:52

Yeah, I think you said Project Runway film there. The History Channel did some stuff there. Yes, it's. It's been used for a fair amount of things that you in the video.

Jenn: 00:23:00

But in the Gilded Age, this is Aurora Fain and her husband Charles, remember, and I'm spoiler alert. Who get the divorce in the third season. This is their home. So they use this as their home. And so you see a lot of their interactions.

In the Gilded Age is filmed in Lyn Hurst in the study. And when Charles leaves her and he's walking up the stairs, those are the stairs at Lyn Hurst.

So it's, it's used as a primary filming location for the show, but it's used for Aurora Fane. And if you know anything about the show, Aurora Fane will be the first one to introduce Mrs. Russell.

So Jay Gould's character's inspirations, wife to society, because they're new money, so it's hard to break into new society. And Aurora Fane is old money and she's a friend, so she introduces her into society.

So this I wanted to visit here and show it to you because if you're a friend of the Gilded Age, it's used in the show. But also the character of Jay Gould is the inspiration for George Russell. So it's a really neat place to see. It's also open to the public.

It's open for you to go and see. And it's right there along the Hudson in Tarrytown. So if you're also doing Sleepy Hollow things and you're like, what else can I do here?

Lynn Hurst is there for you.

Scott: 00:24:15

Yeah, it was, it was really neat. And if you're into.

We've had a friend of ours, another fellow history content creator, History Hunters, commented on our first video, we have a couple videos of this Gilded Age kind of era. And he said they're, they're. Him and his wife are a big fan, kind of the Gilded Age era of history. And so they really enjoyed this video.

So if you like that, you're probably going to like this video series. So check out the podcast Show Notes and you can watch those yourself.

Imagine walking through the opulent halls of the breakers, where Cornelius Vanderbilt II once hosted lavish gatherings. The air filled with melodies of a bygone era.

Picture the grandeur of the the Marble House where Alva Vanderbilt orchestrated social events that set the tone for high society. These mansions are more than just architectural marvels.

They are a silent witness to the ambitions, triumphs, and challenges of the families who shaped America's industrial and cultural landscape. Their walls have absorbed the echoes of history, from whispered secrets to grand celebrations.

As we step back into the present, let's carry with us the appreciation for these historical treasures and the stories they hold. Thank you for joining us on this journey through time.

If you're inspired to explore more historical sites or delve into other eras, check out the podcast show notes for map links, similar podcast episodes and videos from these locations. Our goal is to give you the history and resources to get you out there and have your own historic adventure.

Jenn: 00:25:46

Yes, thank you. Let's go after the History Channel.

Scott: 00:25:50

This has been a Walk with History production. Talk With History is created and hosted by me, Scott Benny. Episode researched by Jennifer Benny.

Check out the show notes for links and references mentioned in this episode. Talk with History is supported by our fans@thehistoryroadtrip.com our eternal thanks go out to those providing funding to help keep us going.

Thank you to Douglas McLiberty, Larry Myers, Patrick Benny, Gail Cooper, Christy Coates, and Calvin Gifford. Make sure you hit that follow button in that podcast player there and we'll talk to you next.