A night at Mrs. Astor’s January ball, the crowning event of the Gilded Age social season

Right now, if we could flip back the calendar to January in the Gilded Age, we would find ourselves in the middle of the exhilarating swirl of balls, parties, and charity events that made up elite society’s winter social season.

It was an annual ritual for decades. The season kicked off in November with the horse show and the opening of the Academy of Music’s opera series. (Though some of the select box seat holders tended to arrive late and leave early, more interested in gossip than opera.)

December was reserved for the weekly Patriarchs Balls held at Delmonico’s. And in January, the most anticipated gathering of old-money New Yorkers would commence: Caroline Astor’s annual ball.

Caroline Astor, of course, was Gilded Age Gotham’s society doyenne, a plump, plain-looking woman with a black pompadour (later a black wig) and a penchant for diamonds.

With her Knickerbocker heritage and 1853 marriage to John Jacob Astor’s grandson (who preferred sailing his yacht and carousing with other women over playing second fiddle at his wife’s social events), Mrs. Astor was able to propel herself into the role of society queen bee from the 1870s into the early 20th century.

Mrs. Astor reigned with help from her sidekick, Ward McAllister. The Southern-born McAllister was the inventor of the Patriarch Balls as well as the “Astor 400″—a list of the most socially prominent New Yorkers. At some point “the four hundred” were thought to be the number of people who could fit comfortably in the Astor ballroom, but the origin of this is in question.

In any event, Mrs. Astor’s mansion was certainly roomy enough to hold hundreds of people. But who would receive an invitation? According to Gilded Age socialite and memoirist Elizabeth Wharton Drexel, Mrs. Astor would carefully scan the Social Register, winnowing down potential invitees.

“Failure to be invited signified that, whatever your pretensions, you were a goat and not a sheep,” wrote Lloyd Morris, author of 1951’s Incredible New York.

Once a guest list was finalized, each hand-written invitation would be sent out. This “coveted slip of cardboard,” as Drexel described it, began with “Mrs. Astor requests the pleasure….”

What would these chosen guests—the “graded ranks of her hierarchy,” according to Morris—expect as they alighted from their carriages in front of Mrs. Astor’s rather staid mansion (second image) on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street?

On that night, “her mansion was ablaze with lights, and all its splendid rooms were banked with masses of flowers,” described Morris. “Through a wide hall, guests proceeded to the first of three connected drawing rooms, where their hostess received them, standing before the life-size portrait which she had recently commissioned from [portrait artist] Carolus-Duran.” (Top image, from 1890)

As she greeted her invitees, Mrs. Astor glittered in her Gilded Age finery, purchased during her annual trip to Paris.

“A tall, commanding woman of formidable dignity, she was magnificently gowned by Worth,” continued Morris. “Precious antique lace draped her shoulders, edged her huge puffed sleeves. Her pointed bodice and long train were of rich dark velvet, her skirt was of satin, embroidered with pearls and silver and gold.” A diamond tiara rested on her pompadour.

After greeting Mrs. Astor, guests made their way through the drawing rooms to the mansion’s art gallery (above photo), which functioned as a ballroom. While the orchestra played, a supper catered by prominent French chef J.A. Pinard was served in Mrs. Astor’s dining room where “the delicately embalmed bodies of terrapin and fowl reposed on ornate silver.”

In 1896, Mrs. Astor departed her Murray Hill mansion and moved into a sumptuous new palace on Fifth Avenue and 65th Street (below, in 1926). This French Renaissance double mansion was shared with her son John Jacob Astor IV and his young family.

After the move uptown, Mrs. Astor resumed holding her January ball, receiving 600 guests. “It was the largest and most elaborate ball given this season,” the New York Times noted.

The atmosphere was more luxurious than ever. On January 8, 1901, The New York Times covered the festivities once again, noting that this year’s ball had a record attendance of “the most representative men and women in society.”

“It was fully midnight before the last guest had arrived,” the Times wrote. “The entrance of the house was banked on either side by boxwood trees and masses of Southern smilax, in which were placed crimson poinsettias.”

“Mrs. Astor received alone in the drawing room, which was decorated with mauve orchids in golden vases, to the left of the main hall,” continued the Times. “She wore a superb gown of black velvet pailletted in silver, and all her famous diamonds.” (Below, in black with her tiara)

Supper was catered by Sherry, the restaurateur who operated his eponymous French eatery on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street frequented by old money and nouveau riche New Yorkers. The menu consisted of several dishes, including terrapin (clearly a Knickerbocker New York favorite), canard canvasback, foie gras, bonbons, and pommes surprises.

After supper, the cotillion began. Ninety couples danced to a live band. After the dancing ended around 3:30 a.m., many stayed for a second supper, the Times reported, along with a list describing some of the gowns female guests wore.

Mrs. Astor died in 1908; when she held her final ball isn’t clear. According to her obituary, she had suffered a nervous breakdown in 1906, living mostly in seclusion until her passing from heart disease two years later at age 78.

Her timing was impeccable. Lavish balls like hers were falling out of fashion, old money and new money had long intermingled, and society as she understood it was about to be lost to the ages.

[Mrs. Astor portrait: Metmuseum.org; second image: MCNY X2010.11.4466; third image: Wikipedia; fourth image: Wikipedia; fifth image: MCNY X2010.11.4462; sixth image: NYPL; seventh image: Wikipedia; eighth image: Wikipedia]

A captivating photo of a marketplace, a fire tower, and the Greenwich Village of the 1860s

It’s easy to become absorbed in a panorama view of New York City—to find yourself enthralled by the details of streets and buildings and enchanted by the mysterious towers and steeples of the expansive cityscape in the distance.

And when that panorama dates back to the 1860s—a time when landscape photography was certainly in use but not quite as widespread as it would be a decade later—you might as well cancel all your plans for the day; you’ll be entranced for hours.

That’s my experience looking at this 1864 image of Jefferson Market, at Sixth and Greenwich Avenues and 10th Street in Greenwich Village. While the Victorian Gothic Jefferson Market Courthouse that replaced it in 1877 (and still stands today) is a magnificent sight to behold, this low-rise warren of market stalls and the fire watchtower beside it offer insight into the Civil War-era Village.

The first Jefferson Market, at the northwest corner of Sixth and Greenwich Avenues, got its start in 1833; it was a one- and two-story collection of stalls with a wooden cupola on top that served as a fire watchtower (above).

That original watchtower actually burned down in 1851. The eight-story watchtower in the photo at the top of this post and in the below illustration is its replacement—one of the tallest structures in the city at the time.

At the market, butchers, fishmongers, poultry vendors, and hucksters sold their wares, according to NYC Parks. A “country market” of vegetable sellers joined the complex, all serving the food and grocery needs of an increasingly industrialized Greenwich Village.

The fire watchtower—one of eight in the city in the mid-19th century—was manned by a watcher who sounded a bell that summoned volunteer firefighters to the site of smoke or flames. No longer needed after 1878 thanks to the invention of the telegraph and the creation of a professional fire department, the watchtower at Jefferson Market became obsolete.

What’s beyond the market and fire watchtower captivates me. I believe we’re looking north in the panorama photo at top; there’s a stretch of two-story buildings with an ad for “C.H. Howe, Painter” on the side. On the next block, a row of three-story buildings can be seen. I think this row still exists—one building might be Barney’s Hardware, at 467 Sixth Avenue.

The area near the market has a gritty feel, with wagons backed into the market sheds and barrels piled on the sidewalk. A streetcar running on hard-to-see steel rails is the only vehicle on a rough-looking Sixth Avenue; perhaps the photo was taken early in the morning, before the workday commenced.

While the fire tower dominates the photo, church steeples loom in the distance. The spire to the right of the tower might belong to the Church of the Annunciation (above), a Gothic-style church on 14th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues from 1846 until it was demolished in 1895, according to David W. Dunlap’s From Abyssinian to Zion : a Guide to Manhattan’s Houses of Worship.

Spires and towers, wooden and cloth canopies covering storefronts, wagons and a streetcar, and a somewhat shabby marketplace crowned by a strangely lovely watchtower—it’s not the charming Greenwich Village of winding cowpaths and precious shops but a bustling part of the urbanized city.

In the 1860s, the neighborhood had already been left behind by the fashionable set in favor of newer enclaves beyond 14th Street.

[Top photo: New York Then and Now; second image: dlibopenlib.org; third image: NYPL Digital Collections; fourth image: NYPL Digital Collections]

What’s on the menu at a Ladies’ Mile department store lunch room?

An astounding 20,000 people waited for the doors to open at the new Siegel-Cooper department store in September 1896.

This was the emporium New York City consumers were waiting for: 80 departments featured everything from the latest fashions to pets to pianos to bicycles. Merchandise was spread out over 15 acres of selling space in a massive building on Sixth Avenue between 18th and 19th Streets.

(Oddly, the above illustration of the store doesn’t show the Sixth Avenue El, which had a special exit at 18th Street that led directly inside the building.)

But shopping can be exhausting, and even with the 20th century on the horizon, there were still few restaurants within the Ladies’ Mile shopping district where it was socially acceptable for a woman or group of women to grab a bite. (This is the Gilded Age, after all, and unescorted ladies weren’t supposed to dine on their own.)

Luckily, Siegel-Cooper had its customers covered. Among the many restaurants at the store was a “lunch room” for “quick light luncheons” geared for the female palate.

So what, exactly, constituted a light lunch? Based on the 1901 menu, that meant coffee, tea, “pure Jersey milk,” and buttermilk, for starters. And a “dairy dishes” category with very un-fancy offerings like oatmeal and (boiled) rice.

Scroll the menu more, and the items become more appealing. Stewed prunes don’t necessarily sound very appetizing, but tea biscuits and Parker House rolls make the cut.

And Fleischmann’s Hot Rolls! Fleischmann’s Vienna Bakery was on Broadway and 10th Street at the time, on the other side of Ladies’ Mile. Not only was it a fashionable place to buy baked goods, but the bakery was the first to come up with the idea of a “breadline” where hungry New Yorkers could queue up at night for free bread and coffee.

Pastry and pies? This is the good stuff. The variety of pies is quite impressive. The sandwiches, too, look appetizing. Except for the lettuce sandwich—doesn’t seem very filling.

The rest of the menu features soups, stews, cheese, and ice cream. Columbian ice cream—this I’ve never heard of. Tortoni, on the other hand, is rum-flavored.

[Menu: NYPL]

Before it was the Limelight, this Chelsea church appeared in an 1890 painting

“A Spring Morning” is Impressionist loveliness by Childe Hassam—the New York City-based painter who created enchanting street scenes out of loose brushstrokes and plays on darkness and light.

Hassam’s work is also a time machine back to an earlier New York. This one takes us to 1890, just after Hassam settled in Gotham and began painting out of a studio on Fifth Avenue and 17th Street.

He didn’t go far to capture this scene. On West 20th Street looking toward Sixth Avenue, two women of wealth are about to alight a carriage; two more trail behind on the brownstone steps. A well-dressed male pedestrian walks behind another pedestrian, a woman, who shields herself and her children from the warm spring sun with an umbrella.

This stretch of Chelsea has long since lost its cachet as an elite brownstone row; it was already going out of fashion when Hassam painted it, thanks to the increasing presence of commerce in the neighborhood and the elevated train traveling up and down Sixth Avenue, which Hassam obscures.

But unlike the rest of this former residential block, two of the buildings in the painting remain with us.

First, the gold-domed tower in the center of the painting: It was part of the block-long Hugh O’Neill Dry Goods Emporium, one of the legendary retail establishments on the Sixth Avenue part of the Ladies Mile shopping district. Today, it’s the O’Neill Building, a luxury condo residence.

Across Sixth Avenue from the domed tower is another tall structure, part of a Gothic-style church (above, in 1876; below, in 1907) that looks like it belongs in the country. This was the Church of the Holy Communion, completed in 1845 by Richard Upjohn. In its day, this Episcopalian church was one of the most elite in New York City.

Those of us born in the 20th century, however, might know it better as the Limelight—the infamous dance club that opened in the 1980s and finished its run as a nightclub haunt in the early 2000s. Today, I believe it’s been divided into retail spaces.

Childe Hassam couldn’t have imagined how the church, whose parish disbanded in the 1970s, would be repurposed a century after he painted this serene scene of privileged Gilded Age New Yorkers.

[First image: Wikiart; second image: Miller’s New York as It Is, 1876; third image: MCNY, 1907, x2010.11.8720]

All that remains of a legendary Astor Place department store few New Yorkers remember

The letters are large and elegant, but they’re easy to miss—set against an off-white facade above a rusty garage door on Lafayette Street.

“Wanamaker,” the letters read. You’re forgiven if the name doesn’t ring a bell. This faint signage is just about all that remains of Wanamaker’s, a top department store that arrived in New York City in 1896 and became a leading retailer through the mid-1950s.

The story of Wanamaker’s echoes the story of so many of Gotham’s legendary dry goods emporiums, as they used to be known. These highly competitive stores made huge profits thanks to the riches of the Gilded Age and the introduction of modern consumerism.

Except Wanamaker’s got its start in Philadelphia, where namesake John Wanamaker opened his first men’s clothing shop in 1861. By the end of the century, Wanamaker began branching out into other cities as well as New York.

Wanamaker’s first occupied the former A.T. Stewart store on Broadway between 9th and 10th Streets (above, in 1901), then expanded its footprint by building a much larger store at 770 Broadway, between Eighth and Ninth Streets, in the early 1900s. A skybridge reportedly connected the two structures.

“Clad mostly in terra cotta, this grand shopping palace contained thirty-two acres of retail space, an auditorium with 1,300 seats, and a large restaurant to round out the shopping experience,” states Village Preservation’s Off the Grid blog. 

Unlike other major New York City department stores, Wanamaker’s never moved to Midtown. The store stuck it out on Astor Place until shutting its doors in the mid-1950s. A fire then consumed the empty older building. An apartment residence called Stewart House sits there today.

The Wanamaker sign I found isn’t on the 770 Broadway building; you can view it on the Lafayette Street side of 730 Broadway, where the company had a warehouse, according to a 1982 New York Times article.

The only other remnant of this retail giant is on New York City maps—Ninth Street between Broadway and Lafayette is still called Wanamaker Place.

[Second image: NYPL Digital Collections; third image: NYPL Digital Collections]

The streetcars and street characters of 14th Street in 1905

You can practically hear the clacking of the streetcar and the pitch from the vendor with a sack over his shoulder in this richly detailed view of West 14th Street looking toward Fifth Avenue from 1905.

A young man stands in front of the camera, looking defiant; a woman carries packages under her arms on this busy shopping street of middle-class department stores and emporiums. Another woman is in the street, perhaps trying to cross?

Fourteenth Street over a century ago had no garish store signs or street architecture, but its hustle and energy feels very similar to the vibe of the street today.

[Postcard: MCNY; x2011.34.328]

What the figures on the doors of a Third Avenue Gap store tell us about the building

The front doors caught my eye first. Heavy and bronze, these two doors at the entrance of the Gap store at Third Avenue and 85th Street feature intricate carvings and curious allegorical figures reminiscent of ancient Greece.

On one door, a woman balances a locomotive engine in her left hand and grips a caduceus in the right. Behind her is a sailing ship, and beside her head are the words “commerce and industry.”

The man on the opposite door holds a staff with a beehive at the top. In his other hand is a key, and at his feet a cornucopia. “Finance and savings” is inscribed at his shoulder.

Classical figures like these are pretty much the last thing you’d expect to find as you walk into the Gap. But the same set of doors also exist on the 85th Street side of the building, and the allegorical images offer a solid clue about what this unusually dignified building in the heart of Yorkville was built for.

The building was once the home of Yorkville Bank—an Italian Renaissance Revival structure built to serve this growing middle- and working-class immigrant neighborhood in 1905, according to a 2012 Landmarks Preservation Commission report.

The cast-bronze doors, fabricated by John Polachek Bronze & Iron Company of Long Island City, arrived after a renovation in the 1920s.

Four stories of limestone, brick, terra cotta, and granite, the building has the imposing, fortress-like look of a typical bank building from turn of the century New York City—when savings bank failures weren’t uncommon and financial institutions wanted to instill a sense of trust and strength to entice potential customers.

The allegorical figures are part of this strength and trust. The train the woman holds is a symbol of industry; the caduceus suggests commerce, according to the LPC report. The key in the man’s hands represents prudence, and the cornucopia is a sign of plenty.

The beehive is a traditional symbol of thrift, one found on the remains of other former bank buildings across Gotham.

Yorkville Bank’s rise and fall (above, about 1940) seem to mimic the rise and fall of Yorkville. A solid neighborhood bank in the first part of the 20th century, it merged with Manufacturer’s Trust Company in the 1920s. Business slowed as Yorkville’s German, Hungarian, and Czech immigrant communities dispersed and the neighborhood began its slow absorption by the Upper East Side.

The bank closed in 1990, after which it underwent a renovation into a more up-to-date commercial space. A year later, the Gap moved in.

Thankfully the Gap kept the doors, as well as the charming “YB” (Yorkville Bank, of course!) inscription above them.

Bank buildings all over New York City have been repurposed for other businesses—here’s one on the Upper West Side that now serves as a CVS, and another on Lafayette Street that’s become a Duane Reade.

[Fourth image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]

Join Ephemeral New York for a Gilded Age talk and tea at the Salmagundi Club!

If you were a wealthy and well-connected New Yorker during the Gilded Age, your winter calendar would be packed with balls: assembly balls, charity balls, and of course, Caroline Astor’s annual ball, the highlight of the social season.

And if you weren’t one of the Astor 400? Well, you could read all the details about these swanky events in the newspapers, imagining yourself as a guest or shaking your head at the expense and decadence.

Join Ephemeral New York on January 19 for an intimate look back at Gotham’s winter soiree season during the late 19th century. “Having a Ball: The Gilded Age’s Most Outrageous Parties” is part of the Salmagundi Club’s monthly Afternoon Tea Talks series.

In the parlor at the Salmagundi Club’s beautiful lower Fifth Avenue brownstone (below), I’ll be discussing the social season with Carl Raymond, Tea Talks moderator and host of The Gilded Gentleman podcast.

Carl and I will explore what the season of balls was like and how a ball was organized. We’ll also cover the Gilded Age’s most outrageous and expensive balls, such as Alva Vanderbilt’s 1883costume ball and the 1897 Bradley-Martin ball at the Waldorf—which marked the beginning of the end of ostentatious, over-the-top balls.

The event will be held from 3:30 to 4:30 pm at 47 Fifth Avenue (between 11th and 12th Streets). Tickets are $40 and include a tea reception with sandwiches and cookies following the talk. Click here to purchase tickets!

[Top image: Everett Shinn; second image: Hyde Ball via Find a Gravel third image: Salmagundi.org]

A touch of Art Nouveau on a former Fifth Avenue Gilded Age mansion

When Andrew Carnegie decided to build a mansion for himself and his family on Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, he told his architects to construct “the most modest, plainest, and most roomy house in New York,” according to a 1971 Landmarks Preservation Commission report.

The mansion, completed in 1903, did not disappoint the industrialist-turned-philanthropist. At four stories and with 64 rooms surrounded on two sides by gardens, it was certainly roomy.

And while modest and plain are in the eye of the beholder, Carnegie’s Georgian-style house displayed more modesty and restraint than many of the pompous marble and stone castles going up on Fifth Avenue at the time.

But even an elegant mansion built in the style of an English country manor is likely to be influenced by the new design trends coming out of Europe at the turn of the century. The glass and iron canopy over the front entrance, with its curvy shape and floral motifs, seems to be a nod to Art Nouveau.

Though it never made a huge splash in New York City, Art Nouveau design prevailed in many European cities in the early 1900s. Buildings, clothing, and objects were designed with graceful, flowing lines and curlicues that mimicked flower stems, petals, and other forms found in nature.

The canopy is described as “Tiffany-style” by Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel’s The Landmarks of New York, Fifth Edition. Based on early images and the 1910 postcard, above, it appears to be part of the original house Carnegie occupied until his death in 1919. (His wife resided in the home until she passed away in 1946.)

Whether the craftsman who created it was inspired by Art Nouveau or approached it with a different influence, the canopy adds a delightful touch to a Gilded Age mansion that since 1976 has been the home of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, according to The Landmarks of New York.

Very fitting that a world-class design museum occupies a mansion that inside and outside reflects such design and style.

[Third image: MCNY x2011.34.2869]

Looking for remnants of Paisley Place, a lost row of back houses in Chelsea

Like many downtown neighborhoods, Chelsea has its share of back houses—a second smaller house or former carriage house built behind a main home and accessed only by an often hidden alleyway.

Now imagine not just one back house but an entire row of them forming a community where a group of people lived and worked for decades, almost locked within a city block. That’s kind of the story of Paisley Place, which got it start after yellow fever hit New York City in October 1822.

With an epidemic raging, city residents fled. “The banker closed his doors; the merchant packed his goods; and churches no longer echoed words of divine truth,” stated Valentine’s Manuel of 1863. “Many hundreds of citizens abandoned their homes and accustomed occupations, that they might seek safety beyond the reach of pestilence, putting their trust in broad rivers and green fields.”

A good number of these fleeing residents relocated to the village of Greenwich, putting down roots there and transforming it into an urban part of the city within a few decades.

Southampton Road making its way through Chelsea on the John Randel survey map from 1811

One group of immigrant artisans—Scottish-born weavers who carved out a niche by supplying New York with hand-woven linens—went a little farther north. These tradesmen and their families set up a new community in today’s Chelsea off a small country lane called Southampton Road. (above map).

“A convenient nook by the side of this quiet lane was chosen by a considerable number of Scotch weavers as their place of retirement from the impending dangers,” according to Valentine’s. “They erected their modest dwellings in a row, set up their frames, spread their webs…and gave their new home the name ‘Paisley Place.'”

This 1857-1862 street map shows a row of three houses in the middle of the block marked “weavers.”

Southampton Road, which once wound its way from about West 14th Street and Eighth Avenue to West 21st Street and Sixth Avenue, soon ceased to exist as Chelsea urbanized and conformed to the street grid. The houses of Paisley Place then became “buried in the heart of the block between 16th and 17th Streets and Sixth and Seventh Avenues,” wrote the Evening World.

Through the decades, the weavers carried out their trade. Paisley Place consisted of “a double row of rear wooden houses entered by alleys at 115-117 West 16th Street and 112-114 West 17th Street,” per The Historical Guide to the City of New York, published in 1905.

A similar map also from 1857-1862 marks another back house with “weaver”

More is known about their houses than the weavers themselves. “The little colony mingled only slightly with the scores of other nationalities of early New York,” stated another Evening World piece.

By the 1860s, the weavers became something of a curiosity, the subject of newspaper articles and magazine sketches. After 1900 the people of Paisley Place were gone; they either died or moved on when their hand-weaving skills were no longer needed in the era of industrialization.

Their homes hidden inside a modern city block held on a little longer. “The Scotch weavers are gone, but the houses which they built still hold their long accustomed place on the line of the vanished Southampton Road,” stated a Brooklyn Standard Union article from 1902.

17th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues

The writer of the Standard Union article noted that two remaining wooden houses had a “quaint picturesqueness [that] was of a sort to warm the heart of the antiquarian.”

Today, 17th Street doesn’t seem to carry any traces of this former community, and no remnants remain of the wood houses that would be in the middle of this tightly packed block. This antiquarian, however, wishes that something of their lives was left behind.

[Top image: Valentine’s Manual, NYPL; second image: John Randel survey map; third and fourth images: NYPL]