The Gilded Gentleman

Join Carl and  British country house historian Curt DiCamillo for a look into the world of the Edwardian country house.  Audiences became fascinated in these houses through the blockbuster Julian Fellowes series "Downton Abbey" and his earlier film "Gosford Park",  with their colliding worlds of upstairs and downstairs and interlocking social dramas. 

Curt discusses this fascinating period in British history and how the country hous...

Fashion historian and author, Dr. Elizabeth L. Block returns to The Gilded Gentleman for a truly "undercover" investigation.  This time, Liz joins Carl to discuss the world of corsets, bustles, straps and stockings, all of which comprised the undergarment engineering that helped make the glorious gowns by Worth and other designers appear as glamorous as they did. 

In addition to the architecture and the food, it is the fashion of th...

 The small two acre square known since the 1830's as Gramercy Park has also been called "America's Bloomsbury". Taking the reference from London's famous neighborhood once home to many great writers and artists, New York's Gramercy Park has similarly included noted cultural icons from architect Stanford White to actor Edwin Booth to the great politician Samual  Tilden.  

Wandering along the park today it's easy to gain a view back i...

Carl is joined by noted architect, interior designer and author Phillip James Dodd for an in-depth discussion of the "look" of the Gilded Age  - a style known as American Beaux-Arts.  

Architecture constructed during the height of America's Gilded Age most certainly had a distinctive look.  It was a uniquely American combination of stylistic elements of classical antiquity, the Renaissance palaces of the Medici, as well as the more ...

In the previous episode "Dandies: Gentleman of Style from the 19th Century to Today", Carl was joined by cultural historian and maker of fine custom clothing, Nathaniel Lee Adams for a look at this most interesting breed of society's tastemaking men.  In this new episode, Carl and Natty take the discussion further and focus on the early 20th century, when a new brand of dandy was emerging  - one with style perhaps, but also often t...

In this episode, journalist and biographer Maria Teresa Cometto joins The Gilded Gentleman for a look into the life of New York-born 19th-century sculptor Emma Stebbins.   Emma Stebbins is most noted for her iconic bronze statue, The Angel of the Waters, which was placed on Central Park's Bethesda Terrace in 1873.  Maria Teresa Cometto is the author of the recently published "Emma and the Angel of Central Park", the first extensive...

Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, known to all as just Mamie, was another of the larger-than-life personalities during the Gilded Age. For this episode, Carl is joined by historian and writer Keith Taillon and actor Ashlie Atkinson, who portrays Mamie Fish in HBO's The Gilded Age, for a look at just who this complicated and fascinating woman really was. 

If you received an invitation to a party at Mamie Fish's - you went.  Mamie Fish, who had a...

Edith Wharton published The Age of Innocence at a very important moment in her life.  When the novel came out in 1920, she had been living in France full-time for nearly 10 years and had seen the devastating effects of World War I up close.  

Her response was to look back with a sense of nostalgia to the time of her childhood to recreate that staid, restrictive world of New York in the 1870s that, despite its often social cruelty an...

It's ball season! Time to call the carriage for your visit to the Gilded Age's greatest parties.

Balls were the most lavish entertainment one could attend in the Gilded Age -- from Mrs. Astor's annual Opera Ball for around 400 guests to smaller affairs for only 200 or 300 hundred. 

But that ball was far more than an elegant night out. Being invited signaled that you were "in" society. Who you saw there often determined how you naviga...

Viewers were introduced to Emily Roebling on the second season of The Gilded Age. Now learn the entire story of the Roebling family -- father, son, wife -- the engineers responsible for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. 

As a special bonus episode to end the year, enjoy this 2023 show from the Bowery Boys podcast archives, looking at the extraordinary individuals responsible for this 19th century marvel. Greg and Tom walk thr...

Delmonico's began as the dream of two Swiss immigrants in the 1820's and grew to be a social center of the Gilded Age.  Prohibition shuttered Delmonico's along with other great New York restaurants. Italian immigrant Oscar Tucci looked at the closed great brownstone former restaurant at 56 Beaver St and decided to reopen it - first as a speakeasy, then as a full continental restaurant that went on to welcome the famous, not-so-famo...

Carl is joined by actor Simon Jones, whose distinguished career has included King George V on "Downton Abbey", stage productions on Broadway and the West End,  and his current role as Bannister on HBO's "The Gilded Age".

Simon takes us backstage as he discusses his career from his earliest roles, including in the radio drama version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and film version, his role as Brideshead in the iconic 1981...

Ulysses Dietz, noted curator, author, and historian is the great-great grandson of President Ulysses S. Grant.  In this unique and very special show, Ulysses takes us behind the doors of several of Newport's great mansions to understand how architecture, design and decorative arts all combine to tell the story of how this social community came to be and grew during the Gilded Age.  

Ulysses shares insight into some of the famous per...

Christmas traditions evolved over the 19th century, combining influences from the days of the Dutch settlers with British practices inspired by the work of Dickens, and along the way, they became something truly American.  In this special holiday episode,  the Gilded Gentleman visits with Ann Haddad, House Historian of New York's 1832 Merchant's House Museum, and takes a look at how the well-to-do Tredwell family and their servants...

Financier Jay Gould was one of the most famous — and infamous — of the Gilded Age robber barons. He was ruthless in his business dealings, tangled with the Vanderbilts for control of the railroads and fought battle after battle on Wall Street. 

But there was a less contentious side to him as well. Gould sought respite from New York City with his family at his country home, Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, a rolling estate where inste...

The Gilded Age was a period of rapid industrialization and innovation - and that was abundantly true in terms of what was happening in the kitchen.  New marvels like refrigeration, the availability of ingredients like baking powder, and new tools from egg beaters to meat slicers, all made creating over-the-top meals much easier than ever before.  

Becky Libourel Diamond, food historian and author of the just published Gilded Age Coo...

One of the most fascinating story lines in Season One of the HBO series "The Gilded Age" was that of the young black writer Peggy Scott and her Brooklyn family.  Elements of Peggy's father's character were based on scholar Dr. Carla Peterson's own ancestral family.   

In her groundbreaking book, Black Gotham: A Family History of African-Americans in Nineteenth Century New York City, Dr. Peterson sheds light on how this community gre...

Celebrate the opening of the opera season Gilded Age style!  In this encore episode, Carl delves into how the Metropolitan Opera came to be and what it meant to those bejewelled Gilded Age audiences.  Most of the drama took place in the audience - and not so much on the stage. 

On the night of October 22, 1883, the brand new Metropolitan Opera House opened its doors.  The new theater was able to accommodate many more prime seats tha...

In this truly spooky episode. Greg and Tom from the Bowery Boys podcast travel to Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island to delve into four tales of the unexplained, the perhaps unforgotten and definitely the unsettling.  

Our stories include a massive elegant mansion that once graced the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx. Built by merchant and trader Benjamin Whitlock in 1850 and later owned by Cuban sugar importer Inoc...