Gilded New York: Book Opens The Doors To The Glorious Mansions And Opulent Lifestyles Of The City's First Millionaires In The Late 19th-Century (Photo Essay)

The Vanderbilts: Cornelius Vanderbilt was an American tycoon, businessman, and philanthropist who built his wealth in railroads and shipping. He was also the patriarch of the Vanderbilt family and one of the richest Americans in history

By James Daniel

The Gilded Years of the late nineteenth century and the start of World War I were a glamorous era in New York City as wealthy families sought to demonstrate their new position by building vast Fifth Avenue mansions.

Brownstone town houses were turned into dazzling mansions that became filled with precious objects, important painting collections and hosted elaborate parties and balls.

It was the rise of many familiar names that are still talked about to this day, The Vanderbilts, The Astor's, Tiffany & Co.

These families became New York’s first cultural philanthropists, and they supported the city's cultural institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera, many of which were founded during the era.

Beautiful hotels, imposing railway stations and world-class museums were built. Those who designed these landmarks were influenced by the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris.

A new collection of pictures capturing the social and cultural history of these years have been brought together in a new book, Gilded New York. A number of the images are also on display at the Museum of the City of New York.

Dressed to the nines: William K. Vanderbilt Costume Ball. March 26, 1883. Vanderbilt's father was a great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who founded the family fortune in railroads and shipping

Taste: Corner of Japanese Gallery in Vanderbilt Mansion in 1883

Exquisite: Home of Cornelius Vanderbilt showing a view from the southwest corner of 5th Avenue and 58th Street. Part of a landscaped lawn and an entrance to the house on 58th Street featuring a huge stone arch can be seen

Meet the neighbors: Northeast corner of 5th Avenue and East 65th Street, dominated by the John Jacob Astor House which can be seen from the front and side. A horse-drawn carriage is seen at the 5th Avenue entrance of the house

Conservatory of the William H. Vanderbilt mansion, 640 Fifth Avenue, New York City, built 1879-82. The architects who built this mansion are: Charles B. Atwood and John B. Snook

In June of 1941, the Vanderbilt Mansion on Fifth Avenue was thrown open for the first time in history for a ball to raise money for charity

Comfy: One of the dancers, who attended the Benefit for the United Service Organization at the Vanderbilt Mansion, is caught falling asleep beneath one of the priceless tapestries of the famous society clan

One of the exquisite arches in the great hall of the Vanderbilt mansion. Due to the prominence of the Vanderbilts, many American leaders had passed under these arches at some point

Dinner for four: Mr. William H. Vanderbilt's Dining-Room.

Where it all happens: William H. Vanderbilt's Boudoir in 1883

Not a TV in sight! The Vanderbilt's Library

Dr. William A. Hammond's Bed-Room. Hammond was an American military physician and neurologist. During the American Civil War, he was the Surgeon General of the United States Army (1862-1864) and the founder of the Army Medical Museum

No expense spared: Mr. W. H. De Forest's Dining-Room

Mr. F. W. Steven's Hall. The Gilded Age was pivotal in establishing the New York art world in the international art market

Mr. Charles Stewart Smith's Library: Smith was an art collector and businessman in the dry goods business. Smith gave 1,763 Japanese prints to the New York Public Library and the rest to The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Smith traveled to Japan on his honeymoon with his third wife in 1892 and purchased several thousand Japanese prints as well as Japanese ceramics and paintings from the British journalist and collector Captain Frank Brinkley (1841-1912)

1894, Manhattan: The Vanderbilt Mansion on 5th Avenue, residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt

Grand dame: A view up Fifth Avenue with the Heckscher Building, or Crown Building, and residence of Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1921

A view of the William Henry Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York, 1941

Blast from the past: 1900-New York, New York- Picture shows Fifth Avenue & 51st street, on Easter Sunday, and the row of Vanderbilt Mansions

The Grand Central Depot, the precursor to the current Grand Central Terminal (1900)

Manhattan's original post office in 1900

Fifth Avenue looking south from 42nd street in 1880. Avenue shops were then undreamed of. The paving was cobblestone. Telegraph wires and poles made the streets unsightly. The only lights were flickering gas lamps

An overview of City Hall in City Hall Park with the Old New York Courthouse in the background taken in 1915

The old Waldorf-Astoria in 1903. The building was torn down in 1928 and the hotel moved uptown. The Empire State Building was built on the this site

A view looking west on Wall Street about 1890 from the corner of Wall and Broad. Trinity Church is at the end of the street. To the left is the old Assay Office

The old Wannamaker store with a cast iron facade between 8th and 9th Streets, taken in 1903

An old block from the late 19th century remains in Washington Square South in Greenwich Village, and is surrounded by newer brick apartments

Selden car, powered by the engine that Selden built in 1877, in operation on 56th Street, N.Y., in 1905. This vehicle was built around the old engine in 1904 by Henry R. Selden and George B. Selden, Jr. 

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at its old location Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street

The new 1901 prison stands beside the old awaiting demolition in New York. Both prisons were called 'The Tombs'

At the southern tip of Manhattan, Bowling Green with an old row of houses and Steamship Line offices

Read more:

Gilded New York: Design, Fashion, and Society

The Gilded City: Beaux Arts New York

http://tinyurl.com/klyrnbt

Obama's Katrina? The NYT Acknowledges Obama's In Trouble By Reminding Us That Bush Was Really, Really Bad. Remember?!!

Don't you mean 'NYT brats'?

By Ann Althouse

At the website front page the teaser headline  — which is also the headline in the paper version — is:  "As Troubles Pile Up, a Crisis of Confidence for Obama." But if you click to the article, the headline becomes "Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response." 

I can think of a whole bunch of non-parallels: 

1. Bush's political party didn't design and enact Hurricane Katrina. 

2. Bush didn't have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane. 

3. Bush didn't have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it. 

4. The Republican Bush believed he could not simply bully past the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and impose a federal solution, but the Democrat Obama and his party in Congress aggressively and voluntarily took over an area of policy that might have been left to the states. 

5. The media were ready to slam Bush long and hard for everything — making big scandals out of things that, done by Obama, would have been forgotten a week later (what are the Valerie Plame-level screwups of Obama's?) — but the media have bent over backwards for years to help make Obama look good and to bury or never even uncover all of his lies and misdeeds. 

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn't use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad. 

But let's check out the asserted parallels in that NYT article by Michael D. Shear:

The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.  

But unlike Mr. Bush, who faced confrontational but occasionally cooperative Democrats, Mr. Obama is battling a Republican opposition that has refused to open the door to any legislative fixes to the health care law and has blocked him at virtually every turn.

Oh, well, that's another nonparallel. Republicans oppose Obama, unlike those Democrats who sometimes helped Bush. And the NYT reinforces my point #5 (above).  

 But think about it this way, NYT. What if Bush and the Republicans had created the hurricane, and the Democrats adamantly believed it would be better not to have a hurricane? Would the Democrats have been "occasionally cooperative" to Republicans who smugly announced that they won the election and they've been wanting this hurricane for 100 years and canceling the hurricane was not an option?

Republicans readily made the Hurricane Katrina comparison. 

Oh? Note the wording. It doesn't say that important Republicans were bringing up Katrina on their own. I suspect that the journalist, Shear, asked various Republicans to talk about Bush and Katrina and some of them did.

“The echoes to the fall of 2005 are really eerie,” said Peter D. Feaver, a top national security official in Mr. Bush’s second term. “Katrina, which is shorthand for bungled administration policy, matches to the rollout of the website.” 

Okay, so Shear got Feaver to put a name on the assertion that Republicans made the comparison. No other Republican is named. Shear moves on to Obama's "top aides" and tells us — here's my point #5 again —  that they stressed how unlike Katrina it is, since "Mr. Obama is struggling to extend health care to millions of people who do not have it. Those are very different issues."  

I agree. The health care screwup isn't a natural disaster. Obama and the Democrats made their own disaster, stepping up to do something they should have known they weren't going to be able to do well, and they lied about what they were doing to get it passed. 

And yet they meant well. They wanted to help people. Unlike Bush, who — what? — asked for that hurricane? 

ADDED: My point #4, above, draws from this passage in Bush's "Decision Points" (previously blogged here):

If I invoked the Insurrection Act against [Governor Blanco's] wishes, the world would see a male Republican president usurping the authority of a female Democratic governor by declaring an insurrection in a largely African American city. That left me in a tough position. That would arouse controversy anywhere. To do so in the Deep South, where there had been centuries of states' rights tensions, could unleash holy hell.

And the NYT would have framed it that way (which is my point #5).

'Toon of the Day: Twerk That Obamcare, Twerk It!

So, Martin Bashir, Should Someone Shit In These People's Mouths And Piss In Their Eyes Or Are You Just A Flaming Hypocrite?

Martin Bashir has suggested that someone should shit in Sarah Palin's mouth and piss on her eyes...

Via Noel Sheppard

BASHIR: It’lll be like slavery. Given her well-established reputation as a world class idiot, it’s hardly surprising that she should choose to mention slavery in a way that is abominable to anyone who knows anything about its barbaric history. So here’s an example.

One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years. Thistlewood was the son of a tenant farmer who arrived on the island of Jamaica in April 1750, and assumed the position of overseer at a major plantation. What is most shocking about Thistlewood’s diary is not simply the fact that he assumes the right to own and possess other human beings, but is the sheer cruelty and brutality of his regime.

In 1756, he records that “A slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.” This became known as Darby’s dose, a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owners savagery and inhumanity.

And he mentions a similar incident again in 1756, this time in relation to a man he refers to as Punch. “Flogged Punch well, and then washed and rubbed salt pickle, lime juice and bird pepper; made Negro Joe piss in his eyes and mouth.” I could go on, but you get the point.

When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.

So, Martin Bashir, should someone shit in this Occupy Wall Street woman's mouth and piss on her  eyes?

And, this woman's...

And, her's...

And, just so that I don't only condemn women to The Martin Bashir Treatment...

Oh, and we shant overlook these college students...

Or these OWSers...

And, for the finale, Marty, tell this guy that he deserves the Thistlewood Treatment...

Related:

Who Was The First Slave Owner In The Colonies?

http://tinyurl.com/m4qlasl