The Gilded Gentleman

The Gilded Gentleman

The Gilded Gentleman history podcast takes listeners on a cultural and social journey into the mansions, salons, dining rooms, libraries and theatres including the worlds above as well as below stairs of America's Gilded Age, France's Belle Epoque and late Victorian and Edwardian England. thegildedgentleman.com

Episodes

July 15, 2025 49 mins

During the late 19th century, nearly 200 wealthy young American women were caught up in marriages with members of British and European nobility. 

The goal was to secure aristocratic titles that would create a solid social position for the American family wishing to climb through the snobbery of Gilded Age society. The European gentlemen, meanwhile, wanted the American funds to shore up crumbling wealth and in some cases quite litera...

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Are you as bewitched and bedazzled with this season of HBO's The Gilded Age as we are? And have you been curious about how all the magic we see unfold in front of the camera actually happens?  

Creative Producer Luke Harlan joins Carl for a look from the other side of the camera to explore how The Gilded Age is actually shaped, filmed and edited.  How is the script developed? How is a typical scene filmed? What is it like shooting s...

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July 1, 2025 36 mins

The Gilded Gentleman looks at one of the most legendary figures of the Gilded Age – Caroline Astor, or the Mrs Astor, the ruler and creator of New York’s high society in the early 1870s. Is she anything like the depiction on HBO's The Gilded Age?

In collaboration with Southern social climber Ward McAllister, Mrs. Astor essentially created the rules for who was ‘acceptable’ in New York social circles.

But she’s also known for her batt...

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The Gilded Age was by no means simply an East Coast phenomenon. Wealth, position and social structure evolved across the country as railroads and improved technology pushed the country west. 

Denver, Colorado, grew from a "tavern town" at the foothills of the Rockies to an important Western center for commerce and society. Social Denver was largely ruled by the Southern-born Louise Sneed Hill whose very different and modern vision f...

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June 10, 2025 60 mins

The life of Frederick Douglass, the great 19th century statesman, orator, writer and abolitionist, is a triumphantly American story.

He was born into slavery in the early years of the 19th century and died at the very height of the Gilded Age. His tremendous talents as a leader brought him out of slavery and into the heart of the Gilded Age as a player in the political worlds of Lincoln,  Grant and Hayes.

Joining Carl on this episode...

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Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Stephanie Herdrich joins Carl for an in-depth look at how the career and personal life of Gilded Age artist John Singer Sargent evolved over his ten-year period in Paris from the 1870's to the mid 1880's.  

Sargent is the subject of a major new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that focuses on this period beginning in his late adolescent years and leading up to the creation of his master...

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The Irish-born Augustus Saint-Gaudens came to this country as a small child and over the course of his career and life, reaching into the early years of the 20th century, became an artist that truly defined a look for America in sculpture.  

His extraordinary natural talent grew into a master artist who was able to create lifelike depictions in marble and bronze that brought a realism never before seen in American sculpture. Saint-G...

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May 6, 2025 51 mins

With the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual Gala on the first Monday of May and the new exhibition on John Singer Sargent and Paris, there is most definitely fashion in the air.  In this ENCORE episode with listener favorite Dr. Elizabeth L. Block we delve into the stories of some of the most important designers and couture houses of Belle Epoque Paris. 

This episode was based on Liz's first book, "Dressing Up: How American Women I...

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During the 19th century and culminating in America's Gilded Age, the public's deep fascination for all things Egypt led to "Egyptomania," a craze which affected design, style and cultural and social thought. As a result of wave of exploration and discovery, predominantly by French, English and American parties, the world gained a view into one of the world's most ancient cultures. 

Architecture, fashion and interior design were all ...

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This week The Frick Collection will reopen its doors to the public after a renovation and restoration of nearly five years and a cost of $220 million dollars. Visitors will again see the elegant Beaux Arts mansion once occupied by Gilded Age industrialist Henry Clay Frick and his wife and daughter. They will also see the priceless collection of masterworks of art from the Renaissance through the 19th century, much of acquired by Fr...

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Between the late 1890s and early 1920s, over 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe made the long, arduous and unsettling journey to America to escape persecution and violence in their native countries. 

Many of these Jews were fleeing Russia, where a state sanctioned antisemitism forced many to escape for their lives.  This mass immigration was, in large part, the result of the efforts of three entrepreneurial men whose efforts insured...

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New York's NoHo neighborhood, wedged between Greenwich Village and the East Village, holds the stories of many people and places that then went on to become deeply associated with the Gilded Age.  

The Astor family began their dynasty here in both investment and real estate as did the well known Dutch-American merchant family the Schermerhorns.  Caroline Schermerhone who went on to become the famed Mrs. Astor grew up right here on B...

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Belle da Costa Greene is a truly unique historical figure. As the librarian of Gilded Age financier J.P Morgan's extraordinary personal collection of rare books, manuscripts and historical objects,  Greene was one of the most visible and formidable players in the art world of the early 20th century.  

She sourced precious objects from major galleries and at auction not only in New York, but also throughout Europe with her deep exper...

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Edith Minturn was a Gilded Age society beauty. Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes was a New York architect passionate about preserving the city's past.  

When John Singer Sargent accepted the commission to paint their portrait as a wedding present, he perhaps didn't realize how difficult it would prove to be. Capturing Edith Minturn Stokes' strong personality as one of the era's "new woman" resulted in a portrait that in some ways was as sc...

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February 11, 2025 45 mins

Of all the balls and parties thrown during the Gilded Age, the extravagant evening hosted by Bradley and Cornela Martin at the Waldorf in 1897 was perhaps the most legendary, but also the most filled with misconceptions. 

February 10, 2025 was the 128th anniversary of this grand ball that topped them during New York's opulent Gilded Age. To celebrate, we are offering an ENCORE presentation of the episode on the ball with historian a...

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February 4, 2025 54 mins

Who doesn't like to get a valentine -- perhaps even from a mysterious admirer? 

The practice of sending valentines goes back centuries, and these well-designed romantic messages could have many meanings -- highly spiritual, an expression of friendship and love, or even a proposal of marriage.  

In this episode Carl is joined by historian and collector Nancy Rosin whose own collection of over 12,000 valentines from the past 400 years ...

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January 21, 2025 49 mins

Historian Dr. Elizabeth L. Block, author of "Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing," returns to the show for an insightful and fascinating look at hair and hairdressing in the Gilded Age.  

Hairstyles and the methods of hairdressing evolved dramatically over the 19th century from an "at home" activity shared by sisters and female relatives to salons opening often with female entrepreneurs which gave women significant ...

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To ring in the new year, join Carl and listener favorite guest Don Spiro for an encore presentation of the history of champagne.  Don, vintage beverage specialist and former professional bartender, looks at just how champagne first came to be, how its style evolved over time and just what contemporary champagne makers are offering today. 

So pop a cork and enjoy the fizz as Don and Carl go back in time and trace the bubbling, efferv...

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Grace Church, a soaring neo-Gothic church built in 1846, still sits today at the famous bend in Broadway at 11th Street.  Throughout the 19th century it was the most fashionable church for old New York society, even when the elite moved up the island of Manhattan.   

Grace represented the early world of the Astors, the Schermerhorns and other families who had their beginnings in the neighborhood around Lafayette Place. The church wh...

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The world of Vienna at the end of the 19th century was a world of change.  New design, new fashion and new philosophy  -- and new music.  

But amidst sweeping change, the Viennese drank champagne and were swept along by the works of the great Johann Strauss II, known appropriately as the "Waltz King". One of his greatest works is the operetta megahit Die Fledermaus which, beneath its frivolity and popping champagne corks, lies a dar...

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