It’s a Monday afternoon, the day after the penultimate episode of The Gilded Age season three has closed with yet another cliffhanger, and I’m standing outside of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts putting on an earpiece. My Gilded Age Mansions tour is about to begin. This building, the first on the north side of East 78th Street, was built in 1912 as the private residence of businessman James B. Duke. It’s quite the mansion for one man and his family, and NYU has stationed a security guard by the door to shoo away the curious from so much as standing on the steps.
The Gilded Age can still be found everywhere in New York City for those who look, in particular on the blocks lining Central Park on the Upper East Side. Looming low over traffic, framed by telephone poles and traffic lights, many of the mansions built by the wealthy during the last two decades of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century (technically the Progressive era, although the styles and sponsors remained largely the same, and the preservation of the homes this side of that century has been more successful) still stand. Some have found second lives as museums and schools. You won’t go inside most any of them on this tour, at least not without paying an additional admission fee, but the façades are free for all to enjoy.
Our tour guide, AJ, is Brooklyn born-and-bred, but now lives in Washington Heights. I’m surprised and delighted to see that many of my fellow tourgoers are New Yorkers, with AJ confirming that locals are commonly present (“the other day, I had to chase two women from Brooklyn down the block because they left the tour early with their earpieces”). Before we begin, he asks how many of us were drawn here from watching The Gilded Age, and about half the crowd of 20 raise their hands. Luckily for those not caught up (or who don’t watch at all), we’re assured that we will only discuss season one of the show. And then we’re off.
The tour
As advertised, this walking tour lasts exactly two hours. It starts at the aforementioned address on East 78th Street and ends on East 92nd and Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Jewish Museum. Along the way, we stop outside—but do not go into—the Harry F. Sinclair House at 2 East 79th Street (now owned by the Ukrainian Institute), the Beaux-Arts townhouse headquarters of the American Irish Historical Society, and the Payne Whitney House. This last of which, located at 972 Fifth Avenue, now houses the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and has a bookshop that is visitable every day of the week except for Monday, conveniently the day of my tour, when it is closed.
We go, too, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which, while not a Gilded Age mansion, is still a Gilded Age institution, having been constructed during the period in an act of noblesse oblige. This stop functions as an air-conditioned bathroom break, but we do not go into the galleries as the tour does not include museum tickets. Further museums on the itinerary are Neue Galerie on 86th and Fifth, within the William Starr Miller House, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. We are able, discreetly, to enter the lobby of the latter for some interior thrills, although we have to conceal our microphones in advance. Our final stop is at the Jewish Museum, the former mansion of financier Felix M. Warburg. Along the way, AJ peppers in detailed profiles of the building’s original owners, which I will not spoil because, truly, hearing them from his well-informed perspective is the prime reason to take the tour.
The verdict
I would recommend this tour to New Yorkers and tourists alike who want to get their steps in while listening to Ward McAllister-style gossip regarding the Gilded Age elite. It would be easy enough to hit all the tour spots on your own, and then some—The Frick, The Morgan, and the Lotte New York Palace are all just a bit too strewn about the area to make the cut in this geographically contained approach—but then you really would just be standing outside, looking. I would recommend booking tickets for some combination of the above museums before or after your tour to get inside and really immerse yourself.