Beacon Towers, Sands Point, Long Island (Library of Congress)
While many great fortunes of the Gilded Age were amassed in other parts of the country, a splendid house on New York’s Fifth Avenue was the ultimate symbol of success. Families such as the Astors, Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Phipps, Goulds, and others cemented their status among fellow millionaires by commissioning the most prominent architects of the day—including Stanford White, Richard Morris Hunt, and George Post—to create Manhattan mansions modeled after the palaces of Europe and intended to last just as long. Most of these homes were demolished and forgotten less than a century after their construction, but the stories behind their creation still offer a portrait of life among America’s monied elite in an era that celebrated the most public displays of privilege.
Outside the city, vast estates with glorious mansions of their own were built along the sprawling North Shore of Long Island, referred to as the Gold Coast, and farther east in the summer playground of the Hamptons. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vivid depiction of the opulent world of Jay Gatsby was inspired by real people, events, and places from what the novel’s narrator describes as “that slender riotous island" that served as a playground for the rich.
Architect, author, and historian Gary Lawrance offers a look at these vanished wonders of residential architecture, their breathtaking interiors, the people who built them, and the changing face of New York City and Long Island from 1870 to 1930.
Lawrance, co-author of Houses of the Hamptons, 1880–1930, is a specialist in the history of Gilded Age architecture, landscape design, and society.
World Art History Certificate elective: Earn 1/2 credit
Other Connections
A Long Island album: Take a look at some vintage views of Harbor Hill, the Roslyn mansion built by Stanford White for magnate Clarence Mackay; The Orchard, James L. Breese’s Southampton estate designed by McKim, Mead & White, shot in 1912 by Washington photographer Fances Benjamin Johnston; and Old Trees, the Southampton residence of its architect, Goodhue Livingston.
