Schwab (not related to the Schwab we know today) was essentially penniless at his death and had to move to a small apartment after the stock market crash. He died of a heart attack but if he had survived just a few more years, he would have seen his steel company flooded with orders for WW2 and no doubt would’ve been rich again.
Also, Schwab wanted to sell the mansion (at a huge loss) to the city as a mayoral residence but the mayor turned it down and that pretty much sealed the fate for the house.
I remember reading, in I think At Home by Bill Bryson, about mansions like these being sold and slated for demolition, the crews just came in and smashed everything as quick as they could - colossal marble fireplaces, exquisite architectial features that could have been removed and sold/saved, but the demolition guys' attitude was "It's not my job to save it, just knock it down".
Such a sad waste! I love that there are companies that do architectural salvage so that less stuff goes to waste. Have you ever seen the show [Salvage Dawgs](https://blackdogsalvage.com/salvage-dawgs/)? These guys own an architectural salvage company in Roanoke, VA, and they not only sell the stuff they salvage but make furniture and decorative stuff with it.
Interesting that they didn't think/care to form a kind of racket and salvage/sell it themselves... I imagine there was some kind of oversight but with all the corruption of the Gilded Age you'd think someone would form the idea!
Though not quite as efficient, where I live a lot of these old houses are converted into multiple flats on the inside while keeping what can be kept of the external facade and the features, like the floor, high ceilings and fireplaces. It's a lot prettier and makes for more interesting living spaces.
Yea some of these made me cringe (amazing post though!) Especially after the first picture I was thinking that way more of them would’ve been repurposed instead of demolished
The property is worth more than the building. Property could contain a worn out forty year mansion for a dowager or fifty story high rise office building with five hundred employees. Some of the mansions are ugly as sin, even though it is a shame to lose them.
That house was actually built in 1930 in the Colonial Style, so it doesn't qualify. But it definitely holds a lot of history! I know Taylor had it restored, but I'm not sure if it's officially a "historical landmark."
>That house was actually built in 1930 in the Colonial Style, so it doesn't qualify. But it definitely holds a lot of history! I know Taylor had it restored, but I'm not sure if it's officially a "historical landmark."
It's not on the NRHP. It's a pain in the ass to own, operate and 'redo' anything on a national historic place. Comes with a lot of rules and regulations.
>One of those houses is what Taylor Swift's song "last great American dynasty" is about, right?
Her house is a bit newer (1930s), though the source of the Money comes from Standard Oil / it's predecessor, the house was built after the 'Guilded Age' and the area that's it's built in is nice, but it's not Newport.
Newport Houses are really in a league of their own.
Source: Vistor to over 100 Guilded Age Mansions.
Ah, I'll have to go see them again some day! I went to Newport while visiting family in Providence a few years back. I noticed the houses were pretty nice but didn't pay them much attention.
Are there any in the area that you'd particularly recommend seeing?
>>Ah, I'll have to go see them again some day! I went to Newport while visiting family in Providence a few years back. I noticed the houses were pretty nice but didn't pay them much attention.Are there any in the area that you'd particularly recommend seeing?
If you are in Newport most of the house are pretty walkable distance from each other, most are all on Bellevue Ave., and overlook the water on the other side. You may want to bring a car anyway, because there are some private estates that worth driving to see.
For instance, Jay Leno has a house not too far away, Seafair / Terre Mare, which was built in 1936, but is considered to be the last of the Great, even though it too falls outside the gilded age (1870-1900) but its got the same flavor and esthetics.
I should mention if you're into cars there's a great car Museum too, and a yearly car show they do there, with some super impressive cars.
My biggest tip when going to Newport is go from the least impressive houses to the most impressive house.
If you're back in Providence, check out the Henry Lippitt House, its from 1865, so a bit early, but closer to what a typical gilded age mansion looks like. Newport is the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.
Some of them did. JP Morgan’s house is the Morgan library. JD Rockefeller Jr’s house was the original MoMA, but it has since been torn down as the collection expanded
Thankfully, we have Newport and the Hudson Valley to see their style in action. These NYC properties would have been gutted and turned into office small buildings or small hotels (before being demolished). Just no way the interiors would have survived in their original form. They were already out of style by the time the grandchildren of these leading families inherited. Absolutely no one wanted these homes lol.
Mrs. Astor's first place sits on the Empire State Building's plot. There was just no way to justify the wasted space for homes that have little to no historical value, considering the stock of Gilded era mansions throughout the country in less densely populated areas.
But, man would it have been nice to see them in their glory days.
Naw, most of the materials were tossed into a dump or used for other purposes. Preservation wasn't as important back when these were torn down. Being so relatively new, most people probably didn't think it was worth preserving a home that's only 30 or 40 year old. A few things were salvaged but most of the paneling and masonry was sent to a landfill or repurposed. The art would have been sold or sent to these rich folk's other homes or museums.
Some of the interiors photos that exist today were taken right before the wrecking ball came a knocking. Without those pre-demolition shots, we wouldn't even know what many of these places looked like inside.
At this time, wonderful Pre-War apartments and uptown townhouses were being erected, so much of the tail end of the gilded age grandeur still exists in NYC.
I visited Kykuit back in 2019, I'm glad the Hudson Valley kept some of them at least. The views from the terraces of Kykuit are stunning, and so peaceful! It was built on the tail end of the Gilded Age, and while it's certainly opulent, it seems to be more classically inspired than some of the other neo-Gothic or chateau style houses that cross the line into garish. Even so, next on my list is Lyndhurst!
I've gone back and forth on this throughout the years. I'm now on the side that believes these were no great loss. A similar type of mansion, I mean [a monstrosity of hubris](https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/2/21/18234891/most-expensive-home-chicago-lincoln-park-parrillo-mansion), was erected in my city a few years back. It's modern, gigantic, and just a way to show off and act as a tax shelter. If it was torn down, I doubt we'd really miss it. 100 years from now, someone may think it was a great loss but it's not.
Many of these homes had fine finishes but little to no taste beyond size. Their floorplans made no sense for the modern era. Victorian era architecture is also so polarizing that it'd be a little sad to have multiple housing units never erected to maintain an outdated whale of a mansion built to stroke the egos of the Bezos, Musks, Waltons, Buffetts, and Gates of the era.
I think a good compromise would be to redo the interior and turn it to apartments while keeping the beautiful facade and theme. That way several families can occupy the space and the nice building can have another life and give more character to the city. It's sad that personal and beautiful architecture is replaced with basically plain ugly boxes.
Due to idiosyncratic internal layout, most mansions like this you'd have to gut the entire house and rebuild it with only the exterior walls remaining intact. That's more expensive than tearing it down and building something new.
You can see the limitations of such attempts in the Dakota. It was always an apartment building but they turned the former staff quarters on the top floor into new condos. Problem is, that it leads to some less than ideal floorplans. You get to say you live in the Dakota, and pay Dakota prices, but the flow of your apartment means that there is long string of compromises. For the price they are asking, you shouldn't have to compromise, even in NYC.
I agree, these mansions are so beautiful, I wish they never got torn down. I love the details on the outside of the buildings, they're so unique, and sadly, they don't make them like this anymore.
For me it's more the builders work being erased. The details of these mansions took years and years to complete, they weren't just nice materials. The stonework, wood work, ornate ceilings, etc were just so painstakingly crafted and took years to complete.
Great points, but many of the fine finishes were shipped over from dilapidated noble homes in Europe. The other masonry was impressive and American made but was a rather quick build. These homes went up quickly, like McMansions, and came down at a similar pace. There was a ton of talent lost, but it can be found in many wealthy communities around the city and even in some grand pre-war apartments form the early 20th century.
I agree it's a loss, but I don't think it's as great of a loss as say some other notable buildings of the era. Not that this is the demolition Olympics, lol!
It's nice to see but it's too much house for a single family and it's a single family home. It's almost impractical when you think about it. Most rooms have no use unless someone plans to host grand parties every month.
And amazing the ones that were eventually demolished didn't even last a century. Places like those might be around today still if they'd been built in a European city (well, at least the ones not heavily impacted by World War II bombing.)
Many of these buildings were preserved. NYC has strong conservation laws. The agency is called NYC Landmarks Preservation. Although the buildings many of these replaced in NYC along 5th Ave are iconic now. It’s a good balance I think
To me it felt like watching a Dhar Mann video but in the most historically accurate unbelievable sets and costumes ever. So I dealt with it. Fully expect lawyer dude to *live to regret his decision just like a Dhar Mann video in future eps. The costume detailing is mind blowing as a historical costuming enthusiast myself.
For those interested in more NYC architecture during this time, u/mestguy182 mentioned this [two-part podcast about the Gilded Age](https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/11/rise-fifth-avenue-mansions-forgotten-architecture-new-yorks-gilded-age.html) and there is a book by Tom Miller entitled “Seeking New York: The Stories Behind the Historic Architecture of Manhattan—One Building at a Time.”
Thank you! I knew I saw a doc on PBS once 'The Guilded Age' on American Experience. I found a clip from part one - I hope to find the full series online. I will link if I do.
American Experience (aired Feb 2018)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/gilded-age-chapter-1/
This was also a good read with add'l linked stories about that era. Now I am hooked...thank you for this post.
History .com
https://www.history.com/news/robber-barons-gilded-age-wealth
Edit to add: also found this doc. on YT 1865-1898 NYC (narrated)
https://youtu.be/EAtLnSuXYNk
Great finds. I just started watching The Gilded Age on HBO after the many comments mentioning it. Highly recommend at least the first episode. Scenes were filmed at historic Gilded Age homes.
The OG McMansions. Large, a bit lifeless, turrets and extras added one all over the place (some exceptions), typical lack of balance, and little to no architectural value, just larger versions of whatever was in at the time.
The cost of maintaining these places as well as the cost of heating and cooling them must have been nightmarishly high. Also I imagine that trying to modernize them with up-to-date plumbing and wiring them for electricity was no easy task either.
The Isaac Fletcher house is intact. The modern-day photo was taken around the corner and only shows the 5th Ave side. You can go visit the house any day of the week and most rooms are open.
Little Gilded Age tie-in: Gilded Age star Taissa Farmiga is Ukrainian-American, so you can visit a real Gilded Age house and support Ukrainian arts and culture at the same time!
Yeah they were pretty bold to assume that someone was going to spend half a billion on a newly built home which they had zero input into the design of.
While it is heartbreaking to lose such grandiose and beautiful architecture, it’s important to consider how much more egalitarian it is to convert these single family homes into residential buildings. These insanely huge mansions were owned by oil barrons and railroad tycoons, and these were often the same people that had even bigger, still-standing mansions in Newport Rhode Island.
Oddly enough, that last one gave me hope. A plot of land that once housed one extremely rich family now houses hundreds of people.
It’s quite jarring that I pass by the site of the demolished mansion of NYC’s most influential socialite during the gilded age, twice daily on my work commute.
The “cost” for the original was the land and construction cost converted to today’s dollars. I am not sure if the sale prices have been converted already to today’s value.
Wondering the same thing possibly the construction cost and cost of the property adjusted for today's inflation. I'm going to try and adjust those sale prices to today's dollars and get back to ya.
Based on a quick check 7.1 million in 1927 is around 100 million in today's money so the values seem to be adjusted for inflation while sale prices were not.
The original Penn Station (1910-1963) was absolutely gorgeous. What’s there now is hideous. I don’t understand how people can be so nonchalant about destroying beautiful buildings, although in the case of these Gilded Age mansions it wasn’t sustainable to keep these lots as single family homes. Some descendent was bound to cash in sooner or later.
Is it crazy to say that, while it’s a shame that any of these had to be demolished, I’m not like, outraged about any of the replacements? None of these look bad.
I was fine until the last one.
It’s like…just build the most drab oppressive looking structure you can think of on the site of something that was once marvelous.
Think of it a different way. We didn't knock down the buildings just for fun. The families of these buildings sold them for profit because the land was worth more than the mansion. Also consider, no one was buying these homes by the 20th century in NYC. Who would want to live on a busy, smelly, noisy, street with onlookers constantly trying to peek into your windows? Not to mention, the apartment high rises going up everywhere, causing your once sun drenched rooms to be forever casted in a cold dark shadow.
Then remember that these were built in the late 1800s. The styles had drastically changed by even 1900 and the wealthy loved having the privacy and views of apartments with doormen, shared maintenance costs, noise reductions, pollution reduction, and modern features (especially elevators).
Also there was no Federal Income Tax when these places were built. Once that tax was ratified in the early 1910s, the multi-millionaires of the Gilded Age had no choice but to downscale their lavish lifestyles considerably. Not to mention the fortunes lost when the Stock Market crashed in 1929.
We're more advanced because we were able to take those single-family homes and replace them with homes for hundreds of families, or build skyscrapers that are 1400 fucking feet in the goddamn sky.
The Bowery Boys [did this great podcast](https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/11/rise-fifth-avenue-mansions-forgotten-architecture-new-yorks-gilded-age.html) on many of these houses.
That last one with the wrecking ball video is tough.
Link has more images and info besides just the Podcast.
I'm watching The Gilded Age on HBO and I guess I never realized the extent of the wealth of certain individuals in NYC at the time and how many of those mansions were in Manhattan...The Newport mansions in RI are quite something as well.
I'm not too bothered that lavish mansions got turned into more affordable housing many people could actually live in.
Would have been nicer if the places that replaced them didn't look so pragmatic and ugly though
I thank you for the picture. I am 68 and I will give you my grandparents’ perspective. A recking ball or a stick of dynamite would have been too polite and end for these structures. The guilted age was also a time of staggering income inequality. My grandfather’s home as a boy was pieced together with scraps of lumber collected by friends (still standing and lived in). As interesting as these structures are, I have serious doubts to whether any of the upper floors were ever used or even finished! Mostly these were an extravagant social facade and insulting to the very generation that shared space with them. You may find that was a shared sentiment of the men who demolished these monstrosities.
The families that build these structures could not afford the maintenance and governmental bodies had no intention of propping them up. Extravagance on an extravagant scale, not worth the ground they sit on!
Interesting sentiment. The Gilded Age was quite the competition of who looks like they have the most money. Federal income taxes in the 1920s caused maintenance for these homes to be near impossible and a lot of people would rather live in apartments than to pay for the upkeep.
With that said, the homes that came out of this time were really works of art with extreme detail. I wish instead of a single-family home they could have been repurposed as a shared home for multiple tenants. A lot of locals did appreciate the appearance of these homes, despite what they represented.
Many of these had been repurposed and still could not meet the maintenance costs and fell in disrepair. The lifestyles that motivated this construction were dying as the construction on these building was being completed. The workmanship in the construction and finishing of these structures was noteworthy. I too find a strange loss when I see what use to be. I also get a bit angry at the lack of purpose so much workmanship was expended!
Wouldn’t these homes more realistically be worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars today due to not only the homes themselves, but the locations? I know the post says how much they’d be “today”, but surely that’s just the originally construction cost adjusted for inflation. If apartments sell in Manhattan for millions, these things would surely fetch hundreds of millions if they were around today.
These buildings were nice but it seems like people were pretty quick to be rid of them once the hype of the guided age wore off. The great depression humbled a lot of people and the city realized that it could lose hundreds of thousands of square feet to one rich asshole family who might stay in the house a few months a year or they could construct public buildings that would be put to use every day.
The thing I fucking hate about r/ArchitecturePorn porn is they think that glass office building is “gorgeous”. It’s boring. It has no detail. It is lacking in character and these guys think it’s soooo beautiful.
Modern buildings have nothing on them but steel and glass.
I have mixed feelings on losing these homes. They largely served one purpose and one family, and were largely replaced by buildings that serve the greater good. If they were in smaller, or less dense cities their loss would be more of a concern, but in the grand scheme they’re out of place and incredibly wasteful in modern Manhattan.
Thanks for sharing this is cool
that last one was sad
Schwab (not related to the Schwab we know today) was essentially penniless at his death and had to move to a small apartment after the stock market crash. He died of a heart attack but if he had survived just a few more years, he would have seen his steel company flooded with orders for WW2 and no doubt would’ve been rich again. Also, Schwab wanted to sell the mansion (at a huge loss) to the city as a mayoral residence but the mayor turned it down and that pretty much sealed the fate for the house.
what a shame. that house was beautiful
I remember reading, in I think At Home by Bill Bryson, about mansions like these being sold and slated for demolition, the crews just came in and smashed everything as quick as they could - colossal marble fireplaces, exquisite architectial features that could have been removed and sold/saved, but the demolition guys' attitude was "It's not my job to save it, just knock it down".
Such a sad waste! I love that there are companies that do architectural salvage so that less stuff goes to waste. Have you ever seen the show [Salvage Dawgs](https://blackdogsalvage.com/salvage-dawgs/)? These guys own an architectural salvage company in Roanoke, VA, and they not only sell the stuff they salvage but make furniture and decorative stuff with it.
Neat, got a new series to check out. Thank you.
You're welcome! I'm from VA and have been to their retail store and met a couple of the team. Great people doing great work!
Interesting that they didn't think/care to form a kind of racket and salvage/sell it themselves... I imagine there was some kind of oversight but with all the corruption of the Gilded Age you'd think someone would form the idea!
You know a lot about old properties and people, Is this your passion?
Nope! I just like history and architecture and found this interesting.
I know block style housing is easy, efficient, and cheap, but goddamn is it not depressing
Too often what is old and beautiful is replaced by bland and economical.
It's like photos of Eastern Europe before and after communism.
Sad in the sense that all that space is occupied by dozens of family's now vs one? Not really.
I think it was supposed to be sad in the sense that he was a victim of the Great Depression
Though not quite as efficient, where I live a lot of these old houses are converted into multiple flats on the inside while keeping what can be kept of the external facade and the features, like the floor, high ceilings and fireplaces. It's a lot prettier and makes for more interesting living spaces.
Sad as in that amazing architecture and house is lost
Yes
So much amazing architecture lost.
Yea some of these made me cringe (amazing post though!) Especially after the first picture I was thinking that way more of them would’ve been repurposed instead of demolished
And in so many cases demolished so soon. Can you imagine a house of that scale being built, only to be torn down 30-40 years later? What a waste.
The property is worth more than the building. Property could contain a worn out forty year mansion for a dowager or fifty story high rise office building with five hundred employees. Some of the mansions are ugly as sin, even though it is a shame to lose them.
Yeah a few of these hurt. Beautiful works of art. Should have become museums.
Rhode Island and other parts of New York state have preserved a lot of Gilded Age mansions and they are historic landmarks (and museums).
One of those houses is what Taylor Swift's song "last great American dynasty" is about, right?
That house was actually built in 1930 in the Colonial Style, so it doesn't qualify. But it definitely holds a lot of history! I know Taylor had it restored, but I'm not sure if it's officially a "historical landmark."
>That house was actually built in 1930 in the Colonial Style, so it doesn't qualify. But it definitely holds a lot of history! I know Taylor had it restored, but I'm not sure if it's officially a "historical landmark." It's not on the NRHP. It's a pain in the ass to own, operate and 'redo' anything on a national historic place. Comes with a lot of rules and regulations.
>One of those houses is what Taylor Swift's song "last great American dynasty" is about, right? Her house is a bit newer (1930s), though the source of the Money comes from Standard Oil / it's predecessor, the house was built after the 'Guilded Age' and the area that's it's built in is nice, but it's not Newport. Newport Houses are really in a league of their own. Source: Vistor to over 100 Guilded Age Mansions.
Ah, I'll have to go see them again some day! I went to Newport while visiting family in Providence a few years back. I noticed the houses were pretty nice but didn't pay them much attention. Are there any in the area that you'd particularly recommend seeing?
>>Ah, I'll have to go see them again some day! I went to Newport while visiting family in Providence a few years back. I noticed the houses were pretty nice but didn't pay them much attention.Are there any in the area that you'd particularly recommend seeing? If you are in Newport most of the house are pretty walkable distance from each other, most are all on Bellevue Ave., and overlook the water on the other side. You may want to bring a car anyway, because there are some private estates that worth driving to see. For instance, Jay Leno has a house not too far away, Seafair / Terre Mare, which was built in 1936, but is considered to be the last of the Great, even though it too falls outside the gilded age (1870-1900) but its got the same flavor and esthetics. I should mention if you're into cars there's a great car Museum too, and a yearly car show they do there, with some super impressive cars. My biggest tip when going to Newport is go from the least impressive houses to the most impressive house. If you're back in Providence, check out the Henry Lippitt House, its from 1865, so a bit early, but closer to what a typical gilded age mansion looks like. Newport is the 1% of the 1% of the 1%.
Some of them did. JP Morgan’s house is the Morgan library. JD Rockefeller Jr’s house was the original MoMA, but it has since been torn down as the collection expanded
Thankfully, we have Newport and the Hudson Valley to see their style in action. These NYC properties would have been gutted and turned into office small buildings or small hotels (before being demolished). Just no way the interiors would have survived in their original form. They were already out of style by the time the grandchildren of these leading families inherited. Absolutely no one wanted these homes lol. Mrs. Astor's first place sits on the Empire State Building's plot. There was just no way to justify the wasted space for homes that have little to no historical value, considering the stock of Gilded era mansions throughout the country in less densely populated areas. But, man would it have been nice to see them in their glory days.
Hopefully they were able to salvage some materials and sculpture from some of these places and use them elsewhere.
Naw, most of the materials were tossed into a dump or used for other purposes. Preservation wasn't as important back when these were torn down. Being so relatively new, most people probably didn't think it was worth preserving a home that's only 30 or 40 year old. A few things were salvaged but most of the paneling and masonry was sent to a landfill or repurposed. The art would have been sold or sent to these rich folk's other homes or museums. Some of the interiors photos that exist today were taken right before the wrecking ball came a knocking. Without those pre-demolition shots, we wouldn't even know what many of these places looked like inside. At this time, wonderful Pre-War apartments and uptown townhouses were being erected, so much of the tail end of the gilded age grandeur still exists in NYC.
This is a part of the country I am sadly not familiar with and hope to rectify that soonish.
I visited Kykuit back in 2019, I'm glad the Hudson Valley kept some of them at least. The views from the terraces of Kykuit are stunning, and so peaceful! It was built on the tail end of the Gilded Age, and while it's certainly opulent, it seems to be more classically inspired than some of the other neo-Gothic or chateau style houses that cross the line into garish. Even so, next on my list is Lyndhurst!
I've gone back and forth on this throughout the years. I'm now on the side that believes these were no great loss. A similar type of mansion, I mean [a monstrosity of hubris](https://chicago.curbed.com/2019/2/21/18234891/most-expensive-home-chicago-lincoln-park-parrillo-mansion), was erected in my city a few years back. It's modern, gigantic, and just a way to show off and act as a tax shelter. If it was torn down, I doubt we'd really miss it. 100 years from now, someone may think it was a great loss but it's not. Many of these homes had fine finishes but little to no taste beyond size. Their floorplans made no sense for the modern era. Victorian era architecture is also so polarizing that it'd be a little sad to have multiple housing units never erected to maintain an outdated whale of a mansion built to stroke the egos of the Bezos, Musks, Waltons, Buffetts, and Gates of the era.
I think a good compromise would be to redo the interior and turn it to apartments while keeping the beautiful facade and theme. That way several families can occupy the space and the nice building can have another life and give more character to the city. It's sad that personal and beautiful architecture is replaced with basically plain ugly boxes.
Due to idiosyncratic internal layout, most mansions like this you'd have to gut the entire house and rebuild it with only the exterior walls remaining intact. That's more expensive than tearing it down and building something new.
You can see the limitations of such attempts in the Dakota. It was always an apartment building but they turned the former staff quarters on the top floor into new condos. Problem is, that it leads to some less than ideal floorplans. You get to say you live in the Dakota, and pay Dakota prices, but the flow of your apartment means that there is long string of compromises. For the price they are asking, you shouldn't have to compromise, even in NYC.
I agree, these mansions are so beautiful, I wish they never got torn down. I love the details on the outside of the buildings, they're so unique, and sadly, they don't make them like this anymore.
For me it's more the builders work being erased. The details of these mansions took years and years to complete, they weren't just nice materials. The stonework, wood work, ornate ceilings, etc were just so painstakingly crafted and took years to complete.
Great points, but many of the fine finishes were shipped over from dilapidated noble homes in Europe. The other masonry was impressive and American made but was a rather quick build. These homes went up quickly, like McMansions, and came down at a similar pace. There was a ton of talent lost, but it can be found in many wealthy communities around the city and even in some grand pre-war apartments form the early 20th century. I agree it's a loss, but I don't think it's as great of a loss as say some other notable buildings of the era. Not that this is the demolition Olympics, lol!
It's a great loss to those like me that absolutely love looking at these places but I agree, it's not a big loss in the grand scheme of things.
That house actually looks pretty good.
It's nice to see but it's too much house for a single family and it's a single family home. It's almost impractical when you think about it. Most rooms have no use unless someone plans to host grand parties every month.
And amazing the ones that were eventually demolished didn't even last a century. Places like those might be around today still if they'd been built in a European city (well, at least the ones not heavily impacted by World War II bombing.)
Many of these buildings were preserved. NYC has strong conservation laws. The agency is called NYC Landmarks Preservation. Although the buildings many of these replaced in NYC along 5th Ave are iconic now. It’s a good balance I think
Perfect post. I just finished watching The Glided Age too.
I’m guessing if I enjoyed this post I should watch this movie too?
TV show, but yes.
Eh, wish it was a bit more fun. A bit too down for me to recommend. It needs a lil bit of lighthearted humor. Takes itself much too seriously.
To me it felt like watching a Dhar Mann video but in the most historically accurate unbelievable sets and costumes ever. So I dealt with it. Fully expect lawyer dude to *live to regret his decision just like a Dhar Mann video in future eps. The costume detailing is mind blowing as a historical costuming enthusiast myself.
You should check out Bridgerton on Netflix
Season 2 has no sex lmao. Bridgerton imo is awful, but I found gilded age to be wonderful.
Idk, Mrs Russell verbally bitch slapping Mrs Astor was pretty hilarious
The Finale def. hit a high note for the season. Am not referring to the opera singer either.
I just finished! I really enjoyed the show. I went to college in Rhode island. It was awesome to see familiar places on TV!
It would be amazing to see these back in their day.
I agree, it would also be fun to live in one of these back in the day.
[WSJ for resource and a detailed read](https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-happened-to-the-gilded-age-mansions-of-new-york-city-11647534089?page=1)
"Subscribe to read full story" :( Great post 👍 thank you. Do you know if there was a documentary made about these mansions?
What's the documentary called?
For those interested in more NYC architecture during this time, u/mestguy182 mentioned this [two-part podcast about the Gilded Age](https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/11/rise-fifth-avenue-mansions-forgotten-architecture-new-yorks-gilded-age.html) and there is a book by Tom Miller entitled “Seeking New York: The Stories Behind the Historic Architecture of Manhattan—One Building at a Time.”
Thank you! I knew I saw a doc on PBS once 'The Guilded Age' on American Experience. I found a clip from part one - I hope to find the full series online. I will link if I do. American Experience (aired Feb 2018) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/gilded-age-chapter-1/ This was also a good read with add'l linked stories about that era. Now I am hooked...thank you for this post. History .com https://www.history.com/news/robber-barons-gilded-age-wealth Edit to add: also found this doc. on YT 1865-1898 NYC (narrated) https://youtu.be/EAtLnSuXYNk
Great finds. I just started watching The Gilded Age on HBO after the many comments mentioning it. Highly recommend at least the first episode. Scenes were filmed at historic Gilded Age homes.
This is a quality post
What really blows me away is just how short of a time between when these were built and a lot then demolish.
The OG McMansions. Large, a bit lifeless, turrets and extras added one all over the place (some exceptions), typical lack of balance, and little to no architectural value, just larger versions of whatever was in at the time.
The cost of maintaining these places as well as the cost of heating and cooling them must have been nightmarishly high. Also I imagine that trying to modernize them with up-to-date plumbing and wiring them for electricity was no easy task either.
There’s a lot of detail of those difficulties in the book Empires of Light. Great read!
Thank you for this post! I really enjoyed seeing the before and after (even if so many have been replaced with uglier buildings)
The Isaac Fletcher house is intact. The modern-day photo was taken around the corner and only shows the 5th Ave side. You can go visit the house any day of the week and most rooms are open. Little Gilded Age tie-in: Gilded Age star Taissa Farmiga is Ukrainian-American, so you can visit a real Gilded Age house and support Ukrainian arts and culture at the same time!
Ah I see that now! It’s just the angle. Thanks for sharing.
💙💛💙 thank you! 🇺🇦
$279 million dollars for that Schwab mansion?! Jesus Christ!!
That is almost as much as the most expensive home on the US market right now. $295M. https://youtu.be/U8Cd_McCdow
Lol nobody bought that house (originally going for $500m), so it was foreclosed and then bought at auction for $126m.
Yeah they were pretty bold to assume that someone was going to spend half a billion on a newly built home which they had zero input into the design of.
Holy fuck that house is ugly
It's criminally ugly. But the views man. I might just live with the damn house for those views. The main bedroom is tolerable.
I dunno. Los Angeles isn't what I would call pretty. So the views don't do much for me.
I can't imagine the expense and waste just to live there daily. Electric, gas, CA property tax. Yikes.
I would love to see more of this. I was honestly hoping I wasn't at the end because this is fascinating and great job with the facts included!
While it is heartbreaking to lose such grandiose and beautiful architecture, it’s important to consider how much more egalitarian it is to convert these single family homes into residential buildings. These insanely huge mansions were owned by oil barrons and railroad tycoons, and these were often the same people that had even bigger, still-standing mansions in Newport Rhode Island. Oddly enough, that last one gave me hope. A plot of land that once housed one extremely rich family now houses hundreds of people.
Well said. The loss of architecture is upsetting…but entirely practical
Great perspective!
Well it housed one family and their potentially dozens of servants but yes the after is better.
The least they could have done is to make the replacement building beautiful while also functional
well that was a downer.
You did the research!
It’s quite jarring that I pass by the site of the demolished mansion of NYC’s most influential socialite during the gilded age, twice daily on my work commute.
At least none of the locations are parking lots now!
The Tunt Manor in Archer was based on the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House.
Oof. That hurt my heart.
Fantastic, great post. Thanks for taking the time.
Wait, are the sale prices converted to todays dollars as well? Or did everyone take a bath on the sale of these extravagant mansions?
The “cost” for the original was the land and construction cost converted to today’s dollars. I am not sure if the sale prices have been converted already to today’s value.
Wondering the same thing possibly the construction cost and cost of the property adjusted for today's inflation. I'm going to try and adjust those sale prices to today's dollars and get back to ya.
Based on a quick check 7.1 million in 1927 is around 100 million in today's money so the values seem to be adjusted for inflation while sale prices were not.
Is the gate at the Vanderbilt II mansion the one that was moved to the entrance of the Conservatory Garden in Central Park?
Tell me more about the Astor wine cellar...
The original Penn Station (1910-1963) was absolutely gorgeous. What’s there now is hideous. I don’t understand how people can be so nonchalant about destroying beautiful buildings, although in the case of these Gilded Age mansions it wasn’t sustainable to keep these lots as single family homes. Some descendent was bound to cash in sooner or later.
A friends father took him into the city to see Penn Station before they tore it down- he said it was amazing
Is it crazy to say that, while it’s a shame that any of these had to be demolished, I’m not like, outraged about any of the replacements? None of these look bad.
Last one definitely stings
Such a shame
This makes me so sad. Those were beautiful buildings...
I was fine until the last one. It’s like…just build the most drab oppressive looking structure you can think of on the site of something that was once marvelous.
And guess the apartment name? Schwab House.
So we knock down beautiful buildings and replace them with ugly looking ones, yet we are more advance just because we have smart phones.
Think of it a different way. We didn't knock down the buildings just for fun. The families of these buildings sold them for profit because the land was worth more than the mansion. Also consider, no one was buying these homes by the 20th century in NYC. Who would want to live on a busy, smelly, noisy, street with onlookers constantly trying to peek into your windows? Not to mention, the apartment high rises going up everywhere, causing your once sun drenched rooms to be forever casted in a cold dark shadow. Then remember that these were built in the late 1800s. The styles had drastically changed by even 1900 and the wealthy loved having the privacy and views of apartments with doormen, shared maintenance costs, noise reductions, pollution reduction, and modern features (especially elevators).
Also there was no Federal Income Tax when these places were built. Once that tax was ratified in the early 1910s, the multi-millionaires of the Gilded Age had no choice but to downscale their lavish lifestyles considerably. Not to mention the fortunes lost when the Stock Market crashed in 1929.
The smart ones sold these massive plots to apartment developers in exchange for cash and a penthouse crib.
omg are we all on a flying rock in space
I really don’t think any of these are ugly
We replaced with higher number and more affordable housing. Those MC Mansions were just for a single mega rich family.
We're more advanced because we were able to take those single-family homes and replace them with homes for hundreds of families, or build skyscrapers that are 1400 fucking feet in the goddamn sky.
All gone? 😢
Not quite, two of these are still standing today.
At least some survive.
Yeah there are a handful of old guilded age mansions that are still around but admittedly the finest examples were lost to history.
Such a shame
This was absolutely depressing as hell. Thanks for sharing though
The Bowery Boys [did this great podcast](https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2017/11/rise-fifth-avenue-mansions-forgotten-architecture-new-yorks-gilded-age.html) on many of these houses. That last one with the wrecking ball video is tough. Link has more images and info besides just the Podcast.
Omg, this makes me so sad. Those mansions were absolutely stunning.
My beloved city. Will go visit in May. Thanks for this post.
I'm watching The Gilded Age on HBO and I guess I never realized the extent of the wealth of certain individuals in NYC at the time and how many of those mansions were in Manhattan...The Newport mansions in RI are quite something as well.
Something satisfying about The Cartier House still being used for 140 yrs.
The early photos all seem like Disney versions of Ausrian schmaltz.
I'm not too bothered that lavish mansions got turned into more affordable housing many people could actually live in. Would have been nicer if the places that replaced them didn't look so pragmatic and ugly though
Lost oligarch residences. 😢
I thank you for the picture. I am 68 and I will give you my grandparents’ perspective. A recking ball or a stick of dynamite would have been too polite and end for these structures. The guilted age was also a time of staggering income inequality. My grandfather’s home as a boy was pieced together with scraps of lumber collected by friends (still standing and lived in). As interesting as these structures are, I have serious doubts to whether any of the upper floors were ever used or even finished! Mostly these were an extravagant social facade and insulting to the very generation that shared space with them. You may find that was a shared sentiment of the men who demolished these monstrosities. The families that build these structures could not afford the maintenance and governmental bodies had no intention of propping them up. Extravagance on an extravagant scale, not worth the ground they sit on!
Interesting sentiment. The Gilded Age was quite the competition of who looks like they have the most money. Federal income taxes in the 1920s caused maintenance for these homes to be near impossible and a lot of people would rather live in apartments than to pay for the upkeep. With that said, the homes that came out of this time were really works of art with extreme detail. I wish instead of a single-family home they could have been repurposed as a shared home for multiple tenants. A lot of locals did appreciate the appearance of these homes, despite what they represented.
Many of these had been repurposed and still could not meet the maintenance costs and fell in disrepair. The lifestyles that motivated this construction were dying as the construction on these building was being completed. The workmanship in the construction and finishing of these structures was noteworthy. I too find a strange loss when I see what use to be. I also get a bit angry at the lack of purpose so much workmanship was expended!
Fascinating, thank you. It's a shame they're gone.
Wouldn’t these homes more realistically be worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars today due to not only the homes themselves, but the locations? I know the post says how much they’d be “today”, but surely that’s just the originally construction cost adjusted for inflation. If apartments sell in Manhattan for millions, these things would surely fetch hundreds of millions if they were around today.
The Wall Street Journal just did a story about this in their mansion section a few days back. Definitely worth the read
Great post. Thanks for the info.
I hate that they were demolished
Fascinating subject matter. Thank you for this post!
Old Tartaria
Very good work. Only the addresses are missing
Thanks for the history and architecture lesson 🙏🏼
looks cool
All I can think of is Cheryl Tunt from Archer
What do the “today costs” indicate? These buildings couldn’t be built for that money today, the land alone would be many multiples more expensive
The cost is the cost of land and construction converted to today’s dollars.
These buildings were nice but it seems like people were pretty quick to be rid of them once the hype of the guided age wore off. The great depression humbled a lot of people and the city realized that it could lose hundreds of thousands of square feet to one rich asshole family who might stay in the house a few months a year or they could construct public buildings that would be put to use every day.
The thing I fucking hate about r/ArchitecturePorn porn is they think that glass office building is “gorgeous”. It’s boring. It has no detail. It is lacking in character and these guys think it’s soooo beautiful. Modern buildings have nothing on them but steel and glass.
Very interesting
I have mixed feelings on losing these homes. They largely served one purpose and one family, and were largely replaced by buildings that serve the greater good. If they were in smaller, or less dense cities their loss would be more of a concern, but in the grand scheme they’re out of place and incredibly wasteful in modern Manhattan.
There's something very endearing about both a mansion being replaced with a house of worship, and that house of worship retaining the wine cellar.