The Gilded Age

Defined by opulence, extreme wealth, and huge cultural shifts, the Gilded Age is a favorite among historians. Yet scholars are not in complete agreement about what the Gilded Age was and how it affected American culture at large. Sven Beckert, Michael McGerr, and Clifton Hood have all written about this era extensively, with each historian specifically examining how the wealthy class of New York City affected American culture and how the group itself operated. However, each scholar makes different arguments regarding what it meant to be a member of the upper class during this time and the effect that in turn had on society.

In The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoise, 1850-1896, Sven Beckert argues that understanding the elites of America, and more specifically of New York City during this period, is critical to understanding society at large. “The goal of this book is to restore New York’s merchants, manufacturers, banks, real estate speculators, rentiers, and professionals to the central place in the nation’s history that they deserve… for better or for worse, the history of the nineteenth-century United States remains incomplete without them.”^[1]Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001), 11-12. Beckert argues in his book that as New York City grew to become the financial and cultural powerhouse of the country during the late nineteenth century, the elites who drove that culture were influential to society at large. He notes that shared culture was truly what held the bourgeoise class together given the different backgrounds they came from. “The diverse entrepreneurial bourgeoise that is at the center of this work was deeply divided and notoriously unstable.”^[2]Beckert, The Monied Metropolis, 8. Beckert states that the wealthy of this era came from a mix of backgrounds and the only true thing unifying them was that they owned capital and wanted more of it. This of course put members of the upper class at odds with each other as well as united them, since there was competition within the class to obtain more wealth at the expense of the other bourgeoise. ^[3]Beckert, The Monied Metropolis, 8.

Historian Michael McGerr emphasizes different elements of America’s upper classes during the Gilded Era. In A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920, McGerr argues that the “upper ten” made up only one to two percent of the United States population and were a homogenous group.

The upper class came mostly from English stock, from families long in America. In a largely Protestant land, they belonged, by birth or conversion, to the smaller, more fashionable Protestant denominations – Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Congregational. With only occasional exceptions, they came from middle- and upper-class origins. Hardly any matched Andrew Carnegie’s storied rise from rags to riches, from working-class bobbin boy in a textile factory to multimillionaire and steel baron. While fewer than 10 percent of the population had even graduated from high school, many of the upper ten had gone to college or professional school.^[4]Michael E. McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (Free Press, 2005), 7.

McGerr’s overarching argument in this book is that the Progressive Era was a time of unprecedented cultural change in America that has not been seen before or since. Those of the lower class were partially responsible for spurring this change as they joined together against the unified wealthiest class. “What would become the Progressive Era… began as an unprecedented crisis of alienation amid the extremes of wealth and poverty in America.”^[5]McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, 7. The upper class was a unified group that the lower ones could rally against to demand change, and membership in this class was dependent on factors such as background, education level, and religion, which made it hard for those outside of a specific group to break into.

A third scholar, Clifton Hood, emphasizes other points that dispel the idea of a cohesive upper class during the Gilded Age. In his book In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City’s Upper Class & The Making of a Metropolis, Hood argues that New York City’s wealthiest people were different from more traditional aristocrats precisely because they were willing to accept others. “What distinguished the New York upper class from the outset is that its members were comparatively dynamic, open, and aggressive (much like New York City) as opposed to the stuffy, family- and pedigree-oriented upper classes found elsewhere in America and Europe.”^[6]Clifton Hood, In Pursuit of Privilege: A History of New York City’s Upper Class & The Making of a Metropolis (Columbia University Press, 2017), xi. Hood’s interpretation is that members of the upper class in New York City were much less focused on a person’s background than they were on their current status; how much wealth and power they had.

At the same time, it is hard to argue that tensions didn’t exist between those who came from older, well-established families with generational assets, and those like Andrew Carnegie, who had risen from nothing to outrageous wealth. As Beckert states in his introduction, “it is important to remember that the emergence of a more cohesive bourgeoisie, the rise of a social group with shared identities, ideas, and at times politics, did not eliminate economic conflicts, social distinctions, and political quarrels.”^[7]Beckert, The Monied Metropolis, 13. Even while unified by their wealth and social status, there was still tension in different forms between those of the upper class.

One of these tensions was a desire to establish a sort of legitimacy, such as that held by European aristocrats. As Hood notes, it was common for the elites of New York City to socialize with nobility when vacationing in Europe, and many children of America’s wealthy class married European aristocrats, thus adding a legitimate title to the family.^[8]Hood, In Pursuit of Privilege, 219.

It is not a far leap to consider whether in some ways, the building of houses might have been another attempt by the upper class to establish their legitimacy. Especially for those who did not come from generational wealth, building a large, ostentatious house could be a way to show other members of the upper class that you were on equal footing with them. And indeed, this is a point where all three historians agree: the wealthy found unity in their quest for more. In In Pursuit of Privilege, Hood argues that “members of the New York City upper class behave like this not so much because they are civic-minded… but because they pursue wealth, prestige, and power; in other words, they seek personal gain.”^[9]Hood, In Pursuit of Privilege, xi. Beckert makes a similar case: “one of bourgeois New Yorkers’ defining characteristics, the ownership of capital, drove them apart as market competition and divergent demands on the state threw them into constant struggles.”^[10]Beckert, The Monied Metropolis, 8. McGerr doesn’t lay out this idea as explicitly as the other two scholars, but instead discusses the idea of individualism and how pervasive it was among members of the upper class. “The upper ten attributed the hardships of the poor not to an unfair economic system but to individual shortcomings.”^[11]McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, 8. The wealthy of this time felt that anyone could reach their status if they worked hard enough, thus inspiring them to continue in their quest for more.

All three of these authors examine the role and prestige of the upper class via traditional sources such as documents, newspaper articles, and similar material. Unexamined is the way their homes, as physical manifestations of their wealth, might demonstrate or refute their claims. Do these estates, via location, construction, or another factor, demonstrate that the upper class was made of a diverse group, or a homogenous one? Do they signify tensions that existed between the elites as they competed with each other for more wealth and power, or do they show unity among this group as they isolated themselves from those who had less? This project seeks to consider these questions and determine how accurate historians’ arguments on this topic have been.

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