Product Description

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

100 color, 150 black-and-white.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104139 in Books
• Published on: 2008-12-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
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.

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Customer Reviews

Wonderfully complete and accurate
I agree with the reviewer in N.C. This is an excellent book. Ive read dozens on this subject (old and new) and Craven's book does the following very well.
a) includes heretofore unpublished photos of homes and people. This is important for the expert who thought he/she had seen it all.
b) the book is beautifully produced. Lush, high grade paper, invitingly formatted.
c) gets all the names and generations right. So many of these books end up confusing names and the generations they belong to. If you are an expert in this subject then you want your Vanderbilts, Burdens, Webbs and Astors correctly named and dated. This adds to the credibility.
d) the bibliography contains books that I did not even know of.

All and all and excellent result !!

A fun read which really delivers on its title and cover image
This is a survey book of the material culture of Gilded Age America which manages to conjure a sense of having been there. If you enjoy architecture, art, biography and social history, buy this book, because Mr Craven interweaves all of it into entertaining prose. I love that he associates the period's elaboration of manners, art, furniture, clothes, and architecture, and I think he illuminates both the things and the context that gave rise to them. I love that he incorporates the satire of Charles Dana Gibson and the observations of people like Edith Wharton, Henry James, and Elizabeth Drexel Lehr. I love that he highlights architect Stanford White, and that he selects some worthy houses to explore in greater depth. On the downside, I was disappointed in the too-cursory selection of photos of famous extant houses such as Biltmore, Rosecliff, and Marble House; a few pictures were new to me but most replicate the guidebooks and will be familiar to architecture buffs. There are only five floor plans reproduced. There are some factual and descriptive errors and society apocrypha which, to be fair, occurs in some of my other books about the Gilded Age and it's architecture. Overall, the text rises above it's flaws and includes many beautiful images I've never seen before. Worth buying new, and for me, that's saying something.

The Gilded Age in Gilded Form
In the post-Civil War period, the nouveau riche in the New York area created such a display of ostentatiousness that that era still goes by the name "the Gilded Age." As the new rich competed to show off to each other and the old, blue-blooded families, one of the major outlets was building larger and more ornate mansions. Needing to create that illusion of family history, they turned to old homes of Europe and built French chateaus and Italian palazzos in downtown New York and in their country homes in Newport and elsewhere. Inside those homes, they decorated in grand style, making household names of jewelers and designers such as Tiffany and Co. and the Herter Brothers. Gilded Mansions is a tour of these homes, with plenty of color and original black and white photographs. Extremely well produced and designed, Mansions is a tour not only through the homes of the period, but also of their history and that of their owners. The many gilded moldings and special touches puts truth to name of the age, and the forthcoming Newport Villas from Norton, may just be all that the armchair voyeur needs.