WASP NYC tour - Art Scenes

NYC

WASP

After the industrial boom of New York (and the country) a new generation of rich industrialists emerged who ended up moving to the city in beaux-arts mansions around the new upper area of Manhattan; starting a competing against the old merchant class for status and power over “Wall Street” — and thanks to the conservation of some Gilded Age mansions you can pretend to be a WASP (or a new rich) for a day.

Time period: 1865-1920s

Movie/book: The House of Mirth (2000)/The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Soundtrack: Chopin/Ravel’s music

Fashion:

Budget: 368-2048$ (58$ for museums 210$-350$ for food 100-2000$ for shopping)

CB Colton: New York City Map, 1883

Frederick Law Olmsted: Plan for Central Park, 1860

This tour would take you through the streets of Upper East Side: the neighborhood where robber barons and their nepo babies built their city mansions next to the new Central Park; and where designer shops, art galleries and fancy restaurants took over them. The area is characterized by: beaux-arts architecture, tree lined streets and mansions turned into museums. During the early 1800s the elite lived in wooden mansion around Washington Square but after the Commissioners Plan they moved up ward along 5th Avenue but this time in brownstone mansion. By the mid 1800s you had a new class of religious New Yorkers that grew up in the salons and libraries of these mansions known as the WASP with the Roosevelts and Astors as their main representatives. After the Civil War (1860-65) the WASP heirs and heiress moved to even bigger wanna-be gothic/renaissance/baroque brick and iron palaces (Beaux-Arts architecture) along 5th Avenue, but they were not the only ones. New money Industrialist from all over the US that “just got rich” (the Vanderbilts, Rothschilds, Morgans, and Rockerfellers) migrated to the city to be closer to the shopping district of The Ladies Mile along Broadway and the street of banks: Wall Street. 5th Avenue became the “Millionaires Row” of New York with the largest concentration of wealth in the world by the end of the century. In 1890 the Plaza Hotel opened its doors to become the most luxurious hotel in the city, but latter it got demolished to make room for a new one in 1907 more grand and fabulous. It was a success! and some guest decided to become permanent residents (the predecessor of the luxury condominium). During the early 1900s the nepo babies of the old and new rich moved to the “new” beaux-art mansions in front of Central Park, leaving behind Midtown Manhattan since it was to commercial. In 1917 Pierre Cartier bought one of this old midtown mansions for a $1 million double-strand pearl necklace and $100 dollars so he could open a branch of his jewelry in it; and since then other mansions have been transformed into luxurious stores, hotels and restaurants you can go to. After the construction of the Queensboro Bridge in 1909 and the popularity of the car during the 1910s the elite started moving away from the city into the mansions around the Manhasset Bay leaving behind the upper east side. Many of them went bankrupt after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, selling their upper east mansions just to be replaced by art deco hotels or apartments buildings — putting an end to the Gilded Age. The tour suggest having breakfast, visit a church and the department store Saks Fifth Avenue in the morning; then visit stores and museums that were mansions during the Gilded Age in the afternoon; and to end the day a sunset walk through Central Park plus tea at the Plaza (and if you still have energy and money a carriage ride at night). If you want a second WASP day visit the Gilded Age mansions of Newport just a short train ride from the city.