SELF-GUIDED NYC GILDED AGE TOUR Part 3

Our self-guided NYC Gilded Age Tour continues.

Make your way to 79th Street and FIfth Avenue

PAYNE WHITNEY MANSION

Payne Whitney was born William Payne Whitney, son of William Collins Whitney and Flora Payne. When his father remarried, he disapproved, and dropped the William from his name. He went by simply “Payne Whitney” to honor his late mother.

His home on 79th St and Fifth Avenue was a wedding gift from his uncle, Oliver Whitney. The opulent home designed in the High Italian Renaissance style was even more beautiful inside than out. It was designed by celebrity architect Stanford White.

Today you can walk inside and visit the French bookstore, the Albertine. The Albertine Books might just be the prettiest bookstore in all of NYC. The bookstore, which is the largest collection of French-Language books in the United States, has this hand-painted celestial Zodiac ceiling. They host a bunch of events, many hosted by the cultural services branch of the French Embassy.

Walk North to 80th Street and Fifth Avenue.

MARY KING HOUSE

Across from NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, you’ll find what appears to us as a quaint red brick building nestled amongst the skyscrapers. Today, 991 5th Avenue is the American Irish Historical Society. This Beaux-Art-style mansion belonged to Mary King, a NYC Gilded Age Socialite and shrewd real-estate business woman. It is now home to the American Irish Historical Society, as Mary lived here with five Irish servants until her passing in 1905.

DUKE MANSION

Remember the Duke family? They were prominent players in the tobacco industry founding the American Tobacco Company. After the Civil War, Washington Duke started what would become the American Tobacco Company, and it became the largest tobacco manufacturer in the world! Washington Duke sold his shares, but his son Benjamin Newton Duke served at the vice-president at American Tobacco Company.

Benjamin was also an entrepreneur in his own right and founded Duke Energy, which provided electricity to more than 300 cotton mills throughout the Carolinas. As you can imagine, the family had quite a comfortable income.

Benjamin Duke’s house is located at Fifth Avenue and East 82nd St, just across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was initially part of 4 attached mansions, or row-houses if you will. The other three mansions were demolished, but the Benjamin Duke House persevered, largely because a member of the Duke family lived there through the 1970s, and refused to sell the family home. In fact, instead of selling, they petitioned the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the building as a landmark, and they were successful!

The house was put on sale in 2005 for $50 million. At the time, it was the second most expensive residence in NYC, and also hailed as “the last intact mansion of FIfth Avenue”. Many high-profile millionaires and celebrities, including Lenny Kravitz, considered buying it. It was ultimately sold to Tamir Sapir for $40 million.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Gilded Age in America is typically seen as between 1865 and 1901. The Met Museum can trace its earliest roots back to 1866, when a group of Americans in Paris agreed to create a national institution and gallery of art, and the museum was incorporated in 1870, making it a product of the gilded age. That being said, this marvelous Beaux-Art façade by Richard Morris Hunt opened to the public in 1902, and those who really know where to look can see that this façade has never been finished. If you look at the tops of those columns, you’ll see four big square blocks. They were supposed to carve in representations of 4 different arts periods: ancient, classic, renaissance, and modern, however, no one could agree what would represent modern, and to this day they still can’t, and so we have a Gilded Age work in progress, well past the Gilded Age.

Want to feel like a Gilded Age socialite?
Mrs. Astor would have loved to see her portrait on a Times Square Billboard. So will you!
Visit timessquarebillboard.com to learn how you can get your photo on a billboard for 24 hours for just $150!

post a comment