99 Fun Facts About The Gilded Age

Who created and writes The Gilded Age?

Julian Fellowes, who also created Downton Abbey, said the era's new rich drew him because they "redesigned being rich": if they wanted a palace, they built a palace.

On which network does The Gilded Age air?

HBO took over the series in May 2019. NBC had ordered it the year before, but the show's biggest champion there, Bob Greenblatt, had since moved to HBO's parent company.

Who co-wrote the novel The Gilded Age?

Mark Twain wrote The Gilded Age with his neighbour Charles Dudley Warner as a satire of greed and political corruption, and historians later borrowed its title for the whole era.

Who plays Bertha Russell in The Gilded Age?

Carrie Coon joined late, after the first Bertha dropped out, and her arrival changed the wardrobe: the costume designer switched to metallic gowns inspired by machinery.

Who plays Agnes van Rhijn in The Gilded Age?

Christine Baranski's Agnes storms across the street into the Russells' luncheon when an anonymous note reveals her own butler is serving there, then beats an awkward retreat.

Who plays Ada, Agnes's younger sister, in The Gilded Age?

Cynthia Nixon's Ada begins as the meek sister living on Agnes's charity, yet by the end of season three Agnes concedes that Ada now heads the household.

Who plays Bertha's robber-baron husband in The Gilded Age?

Morgan Spector's George Russell answers aldermen who bet against his railroad stock by buying up the shares himself, driving the price so high that they cannot pay.

Which actress was originally cast as Bertha Russell before pulling out in 2020?

Amanda Peet was announced in 2019, but when the pandemic pushed filming back to a time she was no longer free, she had to give up the part.

Who plays Marian Brook, the orphaned niece who comes to live with her aunts?

Louisa Jacobson's Marian is left at the station without her purse or a ticket to New York, and Peggy Scott, the stranger who pays her fare, ends up living under the same roof.

Who plays Peggy Scott, the writer who becomes Agnes's secretary?

Denée Benton's Peggy lands the job when Agnes admires her handwriting, and she later turns down a magazine that would print her story only without her name.

Who plays Peggy's mother Dorothy, a skilled pianist?

Audra McDonald's Dorothy spends season three absorbing the snobbery of her daughter's would-be mother-in-law, then tells the woman to her face that she has acted without grace or manners.

Where in Manhattan do the Russells and van Rhijns live opposite each other?

East 61st Street gains a third household from the story in season three, when the van Rhijns' footman Jack comes into money and buys a house of his own there.

Which real architect designed the Russells' mansion in The Gilded Age?

Stanford White went on to design the Washington Square Arch, and in 1906 he was shot dead by a millionaire at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden, a building he had designed himself.

Who plays Oscar van Rhijn, Agnes's son, in The Gilded Age?

Blake Ritson's Oscar pursues the Russells' daughter Gladys for her fortune while hiding his relationship with John Adams, a descendant of the president.

Who plays society arbiter Ward McAllister in The Gilded Age?

Nathan Lane's McAllister decides who belongs in New York society until season three, when his tell-all book about the elite gets him frozen out of it himself.

Who plays Caroline Astor, 'The' Mrs. Astor, in The Gilded Age?

Donna Murphy's Mrs. Astor shuts Bertha out of society at first, yet by season three a scandal in her own family has her asking Bertha to host her annual ball in her place.

The Russells appear to be based partly on which real couple?

Alva and William K. Vanderbilt were dismissed as new money until Alva built a Fifth Avenue chateau and opened it in 1883 with a fancy-dress ball that all of society scrambled to attend.

How does George respond when Bertha's ballroom is snubbed for the charity bazaar?

He buys everything and closes it within minutes of the opening, in front of Mrs. Astor herself, leaving the hostesses who turned down Bertha's ballroom with nothing left to sell.

What does Alderman Morris do after George's stock squeeze ruins him?

Commits suicide: the aldermen beg George to stop the squeeze, he tells them to face the music, and Morris goes home and ends his life, leaving a widow who blames the Russells.

Which real journalist publishes Peggy's story and hires her at the New York Globe?

T. Thomas Fortune was born into slavery in Florida, moved to New York around 1880 and made the Globe known for editorials that denounced segregation.

Which real humanitarian do Bertha, Marian and Peggy travel to Dansville to hear speak?

Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross, and Dansville was home to its first local branch. The trip pays off for Bertha, who is soon voted onto the charity's board.

What disaster threatens George with manslaughter charges in season one of The Gilded Age?

A train derailment kills five people after worn-out axles are passed off as new. George looks set for trial until his own stenographer is exposed as one of the people who framed him.

Which inventor switches on his Pearl Street power station in The Gilded Age?

Thomas Edison throws the switch as the city looks on, and the electric lights astonish the crowd. Peggy is there as a reporter, sent to interview the onlookers.

What goes wrong when Ward McAllister shows Bertha around the Astor summer house?

The owner arrives a day early: Mrs. Astor's carriage pulls up just as the tour begins, and Bertha is bundled out through the kitchens and the servants' yard.

What does Bertha do when the queen of New York society declines her call?

Rescinds her daughter Carrie's invitation to Gladys's ball, and it works: Mrs. Astor swallows her pride and calls so that Carrie can go, then brings old New York with her.

What is the secret of the Russells' French chef, Monsieur Baudin?

He is an American from Kansas: Josh Borden learned to cook in France and took a French name. Bertha fires him when she finds out, yet he is still running her kitchen in season three.

In The Gilded Age, who jilts Marian on the day they planned to elope?

Tom Raikes followed Marian to New York to court her, then failed to turn up for the elopement and chose the heiress Miss Bingham instead.

In The Gilded Age, what does Peggy learn about the son she was told had died?

He was adopted: her father had lied and given the baby away. Peggy and her mother trace him to a family in Philadelphia, only to arrive after the boy has died.

Bertha backs which new institution against Mrs. Astor's Academy of Music?

The Metropolitan Opera was founded by new-money families who were not welcome among the Academy's boxholders. In the show both houses open on the same night, and society picks Bertha's.

In The Gilded Age, Bertha's former maid Turner reappears in season two as the wife of whom?

Mr. Winterton is a rich, elderly widower, and marrying him turns Bertha's sacked maid into a society rival who schemes, without success, to wreck one of her grandest dinners.

In The Gilded Age, which playwright, in New York for his play Vera, takes an interest in John Adams?

Oscar Wilde really did open Vera in New York in 1883, long before his famous comedies, and the first play he ever saw staged was a flop that folded almost at once.

In The Gilded Age, where does Peggy travel to report on a new school dormitory?

Tuskegee, Alabama, is where Booker T. Washington was building his institute. Peggy and her editor stay at his home, then have to flee after the editor stands up to white men menacing Black diners.

In The Gilded Age, whom does Ada marry in season two?

Reverend Luke Forte, the new rector, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Agnes, afraid of being left alone, fights the match, then relents and turns up at the wedding.

In The Gilded Age, what invention does footman Jack Trotter patent?

An alarm clock: Jack's first application is turned down because he belongs to no clockmakers' society, so the butler, Bannister, gets him into a guild and the patent goes through.

In The Gilded Age, whose leadership does Larry discover at the Brooklyn Bridge trustees' meeting?

Emily Roebling took charge of the works when her husband Washington, the chief engineer, was left bedridden by caisson disease. Larry later praises her leadership in public at the opening.

The real Ward McAllister coined which name for the people who counted in New York society?

The Four Hundred was his count of the New Yorkers who really mattered. Go outside that number, he warned, and you strike people who are not at ease in a ballroom.

In The Gilded Age, who vanishes with Oscar's investment, nearly ruining the van Rhijns?

Maud Beaton lures Oscar into a sham railroad scheme and disappears. When she turns up penniless a season later, he confronts her, then pays for her to start a new life.

What saves the van Rhijn house after Oscar loses the family money?

A fortune left by Ada's husband: nobody knew he was rich. The discovery turns the household upside down, because Agnes now lives on her younger sister's money.

In The Gilded Age, which British aristocrat does Bertha push Gladys to marry?

The Duke of Buckingham walks out when George's marriage settlement falls short of his hopes. Bertha talks him round, and Gladys leaves for England as a reluctant duchess.

In The Gilded Age, which painter does Bertha commission for Gladys's portrait in season three?

John Singer Sargent takes the job in 1884, the very year his Madame X scandalised the Paris Salon. The uproar probably prompted his move to England soon afterwards.

Which US president appears as a character at the Brooklyn Bridge opening in season two of The Gilded Age?

Chester A. Arthur really did attend the bridge's dedication in May 1883. The show gave the part to a civil engineer from upstate New York who, like Arthur, went to Union College.

Bill Camp plays which real tycoon in The Gilded Age?

J. P. Morgan summons George and his rivals to his house and announces that nobody is leaving until one of them owns a majority of the railroad they are fighting over.

In The Gilded Age, what metal makes Larry's Arizona land deal unexpectedly valuable?

Copper: a fresh survey finds rich veins where an earlier one had found nothing, and George uses the mines' future earnings to buy the railroad his rivals were about to deny him.

In The Gilded Age, how does Oscar's lover John Adams die?

Struck by a carriage in the street, moments after promising to find Oscar more investors. John leaves him a summer house and some money.

In The Gilded Age, who saves George's life after he is shot at his office?

Dr. William Kirkland is across the street calling on Peggy when George is carried home, and he removes the bullet himself. The family's own doctor turns up late and admits Kirkland saved him.

Filming of The Gilded Age began in which Rhode Island resort town?

Newport's mansions play New York as well as themselves: the Russells' Manhattan ballroom is really in The Breakers, and their kitchen is the one at The Elms.

Which upstate New York city had whole blocks dressed as an 1880s street for The Gilded Age?

Troy closed two blocks of Second Street in 2021 while the shopfronts around Monument Square were made over as the 1880s, and the production came back for more exteriors in season two.

Which two Gilded Age stars got 2024 Emmy nominations?

Coon and Baranski were nominated for season two, which also earned the show its first Outstanding Drama Series nod. All six of its nominations that year went home empty-handed.

The actress who plays Marian Brook in The Gilded Age is the youngest daughter of which screen star?

Meryl Streep's youngest daughter studied psychology before she followed the family trade, trained at Yale's drama school and made her series debut as Marian.

What did American railroads introduce on November 18, 1883, remembered as the Day of Two Noons?

Standard time zones replaced a tangle of local railway times, yet Congress did not write them into federal law until 1918.

Which part of the Statue of Liberty stood in Madison Square Park for six years before the 1886 dedication?

The arm and torch stood in the park from 1876 to 1882, and the pedestal was paid for only after Joseph Pulitzer pledged to print every donor's name.

Which New York Harbor station opened in 1892 and processed about 12 million immigrants before closing in 1954?

Ellis Island's last detainee was a Norwegian seaman held for overstaying his shore leave; by one estimate, two-fifths of Americans descend from people processed there.

Which president was shot in 1881 by a deluded office seeker who had demanded a consulship in Paris?

James A. Garfield lingered for 79 days while doctors probed the wound with unwashed fingers; his only official act in that time was signing an extradition request.

Which 1896 Supreme Court ruling upheld Louisiana's separate railway cars for Black and white passengers?

Plessy v. Ferguson drew a lone dissent from Justice John Marshall Harlan, and its separate-but-equal doctrine stood until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Which wilderness became the world's first national park in 1872, before the territories around it were states?

Yellowstone had no park service to protect it, so the US Army was sent in to manage the park for 30 years from 1886.

Which sport did James Naismith invent in 1891 to keep a Springfield, Massachusetts, gym class active indoors?

Basketball began with a soccer ball and a peach basket whose bottom was intact, so someone had to fetch the ball after every score.

Which British prime minister was born in 1874 to Brooklyn-born socialite Jennie Jerome and an English lord?

Winston Churchill was born about seven months after his parents' April 1874 wedding at the British Embassy in Paris, when his mother was 20.

Which New York World reporter circled the globe in 72 days, racing a rival sent the opposite way by Cosmopolitan?

Nellie Bly had already made her name by feigning insanity to expose brutality inside the women's asylum on Blackwell's Island.

Which cavalry commander, last in his West Point class, died with over 200 of his men at the Little Bighorn?

George A. Custer fell alongside two of his brothers, a nephew and a brother-in-law when five companies of the 7th Cavalry were wiped out.

Which metal's unlimited coinage was the heart of William Jennings Bryan's 1896 campaign against the gold standard?

Silver carried Bryan, only 36, to the Democratic nomination after a convention speech counted among the greatest in American political history.

Laborers from which country were barred by an 1882 law, the first US immigration act to target one nationality?

China's laborers were barred by the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed as a ten-year ban but kept in force until 1943, when a new quota admitted just 105 Chinese immigrants a year.

Which city hosted the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, nicknamed the White City for its plaster facades?

Chicago welcomed more than 27 million visitors in six months to a fair marking 400 years since Columbus reached the New World.

Which reformer co-founded Hull House in 1889 and became the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Jane Addams built the settlement house to serve poor immigrant families, and her 1931 prize was shared with educator Nicholas Murray Butler.

Which Democratic machine ran New York City politics for generations through its largely Irish district leaders?

Tammany Hall took its name from Tamanend, a 17th-century Lenape chief who had become an American folk hero.

Which suffragist was arrested in Rochester, New York, for voting in the 1872 presidential election and fined $100?

Susan B. Anthony refused to pay a cent of the fine, and the authorities chose not to pursue it.

Which Republican won the disputed 1876 election and soon withdrew the last federal troops guarding Southern statehouses?

Rutherford B. Hayes lost the popular vote to Samuel Tilden, but a congressional commission handed him all 20 contested electoral votes.

Which American battleship blew up in Havana Harbor in February 1898, helping to trigger war with Spain?

USS Maine lost 268 sailors, three-quarters of her crew, and a later study led by Admiral Hyman Rickover blamed a coal bunker fire, not a Spanish mine.

Which American showman bought Jumbo the elephant from London Zoo in 1882 despite a public outcry in Britain?

P. T. Barnum paid £2,000 for the elephant, even though 100,000 schoolchildren wrote to Queen Victoria begging her to stop the sale.

Which region of Canada's Yukon drew some 100,000 gold seekers after a strike on Rabbit Creek in 1896?

The Klondike stampede so worried Canadian authorities that, to prevent starvation, every arrival had to bring a year's supply of food.

Which Democrat won the presidency in 1884 and 1892, making him the first to serve two nonconsecutive terms?

Grover Cleveland rose fast: elected mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and governor of New York in 1882, he was in the White House by 1885.

Which 1890 law against business monopolies was also turned on labor unions by the courts until the 1930s?

The Sherman Antitrust Act is named for its main author, Ohio senator John Sherman, the younger brother of a famous Union general.

Which 1883 law began awarding federal jobs on merit through competitive exams rather than political patronage?

The Pendleton Act also outlawed assessments, the fees that appointees had been expected to hand their political parties as the price of a job.

Which Danish-born police reporter exposed New York slum life in the 1890 book How the Other Half Lives?

Jacob Riis was one of the first photographers to adopt flash, which let him record the dark tenement rooms he wrote about.

Which educator's 1895 Atlanta speech accepted segregation in return for Black economic opportunity in the South?

Booker T. Washington's address was later labelled the Atlanta Compromise by W. E. B. Du Bois, who thought it gave up too much on equality.

Near which South Dakota creek did the 7th Cavalry kill at least 250 Lakota in December 1890?

Wounded Knee began as an attempt to disarm a Lakota camp, and the Army later awarded 19 Medals of Honor for the day's action.

Which future state saw the Land Rush of 1889, when some 50,000 settlers raced at noon for two million acres?

Oklahoma owes its Sooner nickname to the settlers who slipped across the line before the starting signal to claim the best plots.

Which cartoonist helped topple New York's Boss Tweed and is credited with the Republican Party's elephant symbol?

Thomas Nast drew the fugitive boss so recognisably that officials in Spain used one of his cartoons to identify Tweed after his 1875 escape.

Which doctrine, tied to Herbert Spencer, applied the idea of survival of the fittest to wealth and poverty?

Social Darwinism bears Darwin's name in error: Spencer's theories of evolution both predated and contradicted the naturalist's own.

Which novelist won a Pulitzer for The Age of Innocence, her portrait of New York's 1870s high society?

Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the fiction prize, and the phrase about keeping up with the Joneses is said to refer to her father's family.

Which Civil War general's presidency was stained by the Whiskey Ring tax fraud, which reached his private secretary?

Ulysses S. Grant's own Treasury chief, Benjamin Bristow, broke the ring of distillers and officials, winning 110 convictions and recovering over $3 million.

Which 1887 law carved Native American tribal lands into individual family allotments and sold off the remainder?

The Dawes Act cost Native Americans about two-thirds of the land they held in 1887, some 90 million acres, over its 47-year life.

Which Memphis newspaper co-owner began documenting lynchings in the 1890s and saw a mob destroy her presses?

Ida B. Wells argued in pamphlets such as Southern Horrors that lynching was used to crush Black economic and political competition, not to punish crime.

Which term for sensational reporting came from a comic strip fought over by Hearst's and Pulitzer's rival papers?

Yellow journalism took its name from the Yellow Kid, a cartoon whose creator Hearst lured away from Pulitzer's World to lift sales of his Journal.

Which author of Ragged Dick built a career on tales of poor boys rising to respectability through honest work?

Horatio Alger's heroes usually reached middle-class comfort, not great riches, despite the rags-to-riches label attached to his name.

Which state joined the Union in 1890 as the first to let women vote, a right its territory had granted in 1869?

Wyoming became the 44th state with women's suffrage written into its constitution, though women in Utah Territory had actually cast ballots first.

Which Apache leader surrendered for the last time to General Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, in September 1886?

Geronimo later rode on horseback in Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade, yet he died a prisoner of war at Fort Sill in 1909.

Which bandleader, known as the March King, led the US Marine Band and wrote The Stars and Stripes Forever?

John Philip Sousa also helped develop the sousaphone, a marching tuba named for him, having been enlisted in the band by his father as a boy apprentice.

Which third party adopted the Omaha Platform in 1892 and carried four Western states that November?

The Populists made James B. Weaver the first third-party candidate since the Civil War to win electoral votes, on more than a million ballots.

Which name, probably taken from an 1828 blackface minstrel routine, came to label the South's segregation laws?

Jim Crow was a song-and-dance character performed in blackface by white actor Thomas Rice and widely copied by other minstrel acts.

Which scandal was named for a construction company that overbilled the Union Pacific and gave congressmen cheap stock?

Crédit Mobilier was set up by Union Pacific executives themselves, and its shares reached more than 30 politicians, among them a sitting vice president.

Which federal agency, created in 1887 to police rail freight rates, became the first independent US regulatory body?

The Interstate Commerce Commission outlived the rate wars by a century: Congress abolished it only in 1995 and handed its remaining duties to a new board.

Which nickname was given to Republicans who deserted nominee James G. Blaine in 1884 to back the Democrat?

Mugwumps comes from an Algonquian word for an important person, and they were mocked as fence-sitters with their mug on one side and their rump on the other.

Frederick Jackson Turner argued in 1893 that what, declared closed by the 1890 census, had shaped American democracy?

The frontier, Turner told the American Historical Association, had bred discipline and self-sufficiency and broken settlers free of deferential European habits.

Which economist coined the term conspicuous consumption in his 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class?

Thorstein Veblen was born in Wisconsin to Norwegian immigrants and spoke Norwegian first, picking up English from neighbors and at school.

Which architect, a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, is credited with the skyscraper-age maxim that form follows function?

Louis Sullivan has been called a father of skyscrapers, and his 1891 Wainwright Building is admired for the vertical bands that stress its height.

Which farmers' order, founded in 1867 with rituals borrowed from Freemasonry, lobbied for laws capping rail rates?

The Grange used secret passwords to keep railroad spies out of its meetings, and unusually for its day it encouraged women to take part.

Which 250-room North Carolina château, finished in 1895, is the largest privately owned house in the United States?

Biltmore has 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms and 65 fireplaces, and its grounds were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Which island kingdom's queen, Liliuokalani, was toppled in an 1893 coup before the United States annexed it in 1898?

Hawaii later drew a formal apology from Congress for the part that agents and citizens of the United States played in the overthrow.

Which Ohio Republican won the 1896 election with a front porch campaign run from his home in Canton?

William McKinley stayed home while his rival travelled 18,000 miles by rail and made around 600 speeches, only to lose.