Gilded Age Resort Happenings of 1900

The scarcity of men which has been felt everywhere was accentuated this past week by the cruise of the New York Yacht Club. Newport was almost deprived of men for two days. Bar Harbor is contenting itself with very young men at the dances and a multitude of luncheons and entertainments where the fair sex is much in the majority. –Late 19th C. Newport, Rhode Island, as depicted in HBO’s “The Gilded Age”

What the secret of this Summer apathy can be, no one has been able to solve. It has been suggested that Newport is so expensive, what with this new craze for bridge, whist and the fees to the servants, and the clubs a man has to join, that the average New Yorker not a multi-million aire shrinks from attempting even a Friday to Monday visit. 

But men who are very wealthy and who live for this sort of thing seem to be as indifferent as those who have a real reason for avoiding Newport and the other very fashionable resorts. There was James J. Van Alen, who only this week, after ten days passed at Newport, deliberately left the place and went to Canada on a fishing trip. It is unmistakably an off season.

The scarcity of men which has been felt everywhere was accentuated this past week by the cruise of the New York Yacht Club. Newport was almost deprived of men for two days. Bar Harbor is contenting itself with very young men at the dances and a multitude of luncheons and entertainments where the fair sex is much in the majority. 

Southampton, of course, has its coterie and tennis and golf have attracted there quite a masculine element. But the greater number of these only remain from Friday to Monday, and the rest of the week schoolboys and juniors are to be depended upon for the small dances which have been given.

There is to be one ball at Bar Harbor and one ball at Southampton. To change an old proverb and twist it to suit the situation, it might be said that one ball does not make a Summer, and even Newport, with three dances in one week. has grown absolutely exhausted at the prospect, and Mrs. Goelet has been asked to postpone her cotillion until the week after Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish’s dance. This seems very odd, when one recalls the past history of Newport with a much smaller population than at present. – NYT’s, “Some Happenings in Good Society”, 1900

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Gilded Age Newport History

By the 1860s, it was not fashionable to stay at a Newport hotel for the season: one must own or rent a cottage. Most of the bigger hotels closed while more cottages were being built. Due to the Civil War, the Southern contingent at Newport was depleted and cottagers hailing from New York and Boston dominated summer society. —From the Newport Preservation Society’s “Newport Mansions,” with intro by David Chase, 1995

The most imposing “cottage” erected in the ‘50s, Chateau-sur-Mer, is an Italianate stone villa constructed by a New Yorker, China-trade merchant William S. Wetmore. It was the setting for the first of Newport’s spectacular parties - a fete champêtre Wetmore hosted in 1857 to which he invited 3000 guests.

By the 1860s, it was not fashionable to stay at a Newport hotel for the season: one must own or rent a cottage. Most of the bigger hotels closed while more cottages were being built. Due to the Civil War, the Southern contingent at Newport was depleted and cottagers hailing from New York and Boston dominated summer society.

In stating this, however, one must not lose sight of the fact that Newport attracted not only America's financial elite, but many of its most gifted artists and writers, diplomats, politicians and jurists, historians, educators, scientists and engineers, architects and collectors. The literary set, led by Julia Ward Howe. gathered at Newport in the summer. Even that colorful writer of Wild-West tales, Bret Harte, spent time in genteel Newport.

For those disinclined to partake of witty theatricals and bookish conversation, the Newport season was very much a season of sport. Both men and women enjoyed riding, coaching, tennis and croquet. Archery was a women’s sport. Fishing, sailing, polo and golf were men’s sports. Swimming was enjoyed by both sexes, but generally not together.

Newport cottages of the 1860s, ‘70s and early ‘80s were large, comforable and oriented to the out-of doors. In 1879, willful, ill-tempered James Gordon Bennett, Jr.- a yachtsman and rake and the owner of the New York Herald — built the Newport Casino op posite his Bellevue Avenue cottage as a place where people might visit, dine, hear band concerts and play tennis. The Casino was an instant success and remained a center of cottagers’ daytime activities for decades. The work of New York architects McKim, Mead & White, it established a vogue for informal, shingle-clad resort architecture inspired by the con temporary British Queen Anne style and American Colonial buildings. Within five years, however, an entirely different taste took over. Grand new cottages were built, hieratic and palatial in scale, and it was to be the very same McKim, Mead & White, and even more so Richard Morris Hunt, who would set the pace in designing princely residences. Their celebrated “cottages” of the late 1880s, ‘90s and early 1900s make Newport the place in America to experience the Gilded Age.

The rush to opulence began with a series of very large, late Gothic stone houses at Newport. They were quickly overshadowed by a residence designed by Richard Morris Hunt and built by William K. Vanderbilt, as an anniversary present for his wife: Marble House, true to its name, is a Neo-Classical pavilion clad in shimmering white marble and decorated with a profusion of richly tinted marble veneers, mantels and ornaments, set off by gold fit tings and trim. It is like an enormous, beautifully crafted jewel box, miraculously set down on a cliff by the sea. After the Civil War, a great many American fortunes, like the Vanderbilts’, had grown to Medicean proportions, and the proud possessors of these for tunes, familiar with both European society and Euro pean standards of domestic magnificence, set out to build on the Medicean model.

Marble House was soon eclipsed by The Breakers, summer home of W.K. Vanderbilt’s older brother, Cornelius II. The Breakers, again the work of Hunt, has never been surpassed. From an architectural stand point, nonetheless, several large later cottages, though less sumptuous, are equally interesting. The best of these are McKim, Mead & White’s Rosecliff and Horace Trumbauer’s The Elms. Summing up Newport at the turn of the century, a British visitor wrote to the Evening Mercury of Liverpool, “No words can convey an idea of the marvelous spectacle of well and graciously and artistically applied wealth which has harnessed to its aspirations the greatest architectural art of the country... The result is such a combination of natural and contrived beauty, open for the enjoyment of all, and cannot be seen on such terms anywhere else in the world.”

The particulars of Newport cottage life changed little between the 1890s and the 1920s. These were the halcyon years of the leisured class. But the tempo and formality changed substantially.

Although, in a sense, the Newport scene of popular imagination died with the Great Depression, it lives on and is perpetuated in the incomparable legacy of landscape and architecture which survives from the Gilded Age, from the earlier nineteenth century, and from the days of Newport's Colonial prosperity. To see Newport today —to visit the Point, Bellevue Avenue, Ocean Drive and Cliff Walk, to enter Hunter House or The Breakers or one of the other museum houses - is to come face-to-face with a unique and living heritage. — From the Newport Preservation Society’s “Newport Mansions,” with intro by David Chase, 1995

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Gilded Age Bathing Fashion

Larking about with a “ride” on the beach, two young women in their proper sea bathing attire.— Manners, Culture and Dress of the Best American Society detailed the fabric and shape of the garment, which “should be made of flannel.” A “gray tint” was advisable because “it does not soon fade and grow ugly from contact with salt water.” The “best” style was either a “loose sacque” or “yoke waist.” The dress was belted at the waist, and the skirt reached “mid way between the knee and the ankle.”

- Image source, Etiquipedia private image library

At the Newport shoreline, Bailey’s Beach offered “a dip in the sea at the society bathing grounds on which the public were not permitted to trespass.” Guarded by a low wall, Bailey’s Beach, according to May Van Rensselaer, was "the favorite bathing beach of the fashionable world" Elizabeth Lehr called it “Newport's most exclusive club. A syndicate called the Spouting Rock Beach Association (aka Bailey’s Beach,) purchased the beach in the little cove in 1896, having constructed one hundred new oceanfront bathhouses and a pavilion was guarded by a “watchman in his gold-laced uniform” who “protected its sanctity from all interlopers” (“He knew every carriage on sight, fixed newcomers with an eagle eye, swooped down upon them and demanded their names.”) Those who did not have proper credentials were dispatched to Easton's Beach, "the Common Beach," as the habitués of Bailey's were wont to call it.

Some few ventured to swim, but a lady's bathing costume, when wet, almost nullified the effort. The apparel for Bailey's Beach (or any seashore of the Gilded Age) was better termed a “bathing dress.” Manners, Culture and Dress of the Best American Society detailed the fabric and shape of the garment, which “should be made of flannel.” A “gray tint” was advisable because “it does not soon fade and grow ugly from contact with salt water.” The “best” style was either a “loose sacque” or “yoke waist.” The dress was belted at the waist, and the skirt reached “mid way between the knee and the ankle.” Beneath this dress were “full trowsers” with the pant legs “gathered” into bands at each ankle. An “oilskin cap” was suggested “to protect the hair, which becomes harsh in salt water.” A pair of “socks the color of the dress complete the costume.” — From Cecelia Tichi, in “What Would Mrs. Astor Do?” 2018

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Gilded Age Playground of Newport

“The Breakers,” summer residence of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt – “There is a revival of the use of various wines with different courses and the rarer and more expensive the vintage the greater the glory. This champagne and scotch whiskey, which is held the favor of fashion for some years are being relegated to the background of the wine closet.” – New York Times,1899

For the Gilded Age Four Hundred, the Newport season was mandatory. Ward McAllister suggested that Newport was “the place... to take social root in.” Elizabeth Lehr was frank: “So much prestige was attached to spending July and August at the most exclusive resort in America that to have neglected to do so would have exposed a definite gap in one's social armour.” 

The armor reflected an impeccable pedigree, irreproachable comportment, and wealth. The “gap” was to be avoided at all costs. Each rival hostess, the queen of her palace, jealously guarded her guest lists, the armament of social power. Mrs. Lehr recalled that the six or seven summer weeks were “crowded with balls, dinners, parties of every description, each striving to eclipse the other in magnificence.” In “the spirit of rivalry. ... colossal sums were spent.”

If elegance was the watchword, novelty was the stimulant. Elizabeth Lehr hinted at the tedium: “Another season, the same background of dinners and balls, the same The same set, the same faces.” Added May Van Rensselaer, splendours. “The restlessness of the summer colony is well known. All amusements pall after a couple of seasons.” In a kind of entertainment arms race, at “Rosecliffe,” one summer, two hundred dinner guests of Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs were treated to a performance by the Russian Ballet, imported from the city for the occasion.

At William K. Vanderbilt's cottage, “Marble House,” the visiting Duke of Marlborough (spouse of the former Consuelo Vanderbilt, now the Duchess of Marlborough) found the indoor fountain surrounded by three hundred live hummingbirds. One especially memorable ball prompted McAllister to record the “brilliant effect” of “two grottos of immense blocks of ice” with a “jet of light thrown through each of them, causing the ice to resemble the prisms of an illuminated cavern, and fairly to dazzle one with their coloring.” As the ice blocks melted, McAllister continued, the effect was a “charming glacier-like confusion, giving you winter in the lap of summer.” “All Newport,” McAllister concluded, “was present to give brilliancy to the scene.”— From 2018’s, “What Would Mrs. Astor Do?”

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

A Gilded Age “Calling-Hat”

An English lady, one of the combination English set now here — the H.O. Bax-Ironside, Dunraven, Marlborough, Paget party— appeared twice in a fall hat of lace. Once it was at Newport and once in New York. The appearances were only brief “calling afternoons,” but the hat was much admired. American women are quick to pick up what is good, and immediately the lace calling-hat was adopted. “Not because it is English,” explained an American lady very earnestly to her milliner, “but because I see — what you have often tried to impress upon me— the becomingness of anything soft and full around the face.”

The Tulle Lace Hat of 1895

The Autumn winds which blew Lords and Dukes over here for various purposes of conquest, more or less successful, blew along a style that is much in vogue in London, but has never been popular here. This is the fashion for wearing the tulle or lace hat for dressy occasions. We like it for golf or tennis or the lawn party or the country drive. But Londoners like it for the theater, for the park and for the calling occasion.


An English lady, one of the combination English set now here — the H.O. Bax-Ironside, Dunraven, Marlborough, Paget party— appeared twice in a fall hat of lace. Once it was at Newport and once in New York. The appearances were only brief “calling afternoons,” but the hat was much admired. American women are quick to pick up what is good, and immediately the lace calling-hat was adopted. “Not because it is English,” explained an American lady very earnestly to her milliner, “but because I see — what you have often tried to impress upon me— the becomingness of anything soft and full around the face.”


As all who want a sudden lace hat for fall, who do not boast a regular milliner nor know one who would get up such a creation inexpensively, the rule for making it may be briefly stated. It is from the memorandum book of a Fifth Avenue milliner, who jotted it down the lines for aiding her head milliner, who was desirous of getting up a number of them.


“Take the wire frame of a summer tulle hat. The larger the frame the better, no matter what the shape, so long as the brim is flaring. Gather three yards of fine lacy chiffon upon the brim, letting the lace weave in and out of the wire until not an inch of wire is visible. This is done by laying the chiffon on top of the frame and pulling it through into big loose scallops. A few stitches hold it smoothly in place.


“The chiffon should be exactly the color of the trimmings of the fall suit. The very swell Newport caller chose white, embroidered in pale brown. Cover the top of the frame with the plain part of the chiffon. Now get two yards of striped velvet ribbon that includes all the shades of the costume, and make into a great, broad upstanding bow. Fasten with an emerald pin at one side of the crown and you have the the fall lace hat. It is simple enough and very becoming to everybody.” — San Jose Mercury, 1895

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Pinching Pennies in the Gilded Age

One famous gilded age belle was engaged, or rumored to be engaged, several times. At one point, May Van Alen was said to soon be engaged to the Duke of Manchester and the newspapers ate the story up, complete with all the necessary “family gossip” and pedigrees. When May eventually did marry, (one former suitor was dead from suicide, another had married her sister) she didn’t show up for the nuptials, leaving the wedding guests confused, while she and her groom, having gotten married in secret 4 days earlier, left for a motor tour of England.

The greatest falling off and expenditures this season has undeniably been in turnouts. Delivery men may be said to be raving and tearing their hair at the unwanted parsimony of the world of fashion. Many people who jobbed a landau or a barouche, for which they paid $300 per month, finding their own liveries, now actually go without the fashionable after-dinner drive, or are satisfied to hire a rumble seat phaeton for their daughters. This is the low carriage which ladies delight to drive, and one of the sensations at Newport is the sight of some famous belle, driving with a sister or cousin to play propriety beside her, and her beau behind in the rumble. 

It is most difficult to persevere that air of conquering grace which a beau who has a fine pair of mustaches one inevitably assumes when one is a cramped in a tiny seat, intended for a boyish page, fastened to the carriage by tiny iron springs, and bounding high into the air, whenever the carriage gives the least tip. But this is the style nowadays, and as it inculcates considerable self-sacrifice in young men who are apt to be selfish, and gives rest to those buttony boys who are considered the correct attendants for such an equipage, it is a good thing. 

I regret to learn that even here the fell spirit of economy intervenes, and that too many parents, instead of hiring these concerns by the month, take them only occasionally for the afternoon drive. Young ladies therefore can make themselves conspicuous and their beaus ridiculous, at the low rate of $4 an afternoon, which, it must be allowed, is cheap indeed. —New York Times, August 1875

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Marie Antoinette vs 19th C. Anglomania

If the ladies could only see how pretty is their gesture when their diaphanous forefinger and thumb grasps a leaf of delicate green lettuce and raises that leaf from the porcelain plate to their rosy lips, they would all immediately take to eating salad à la Marie Antoinette. 

—Photo source, Weheartit.com

Theodore Child writes in Harper’s Bazar: 

The Anglo-Saxons are afraid to use their fingers to eat with, especially the English. Thanks to this hesitation, I have seen in the course of my travels in the old world many distressing sights, I have seen a lady attempt to eat écrevisse with a knife and fork and abandon the attempt in despair. I have also seen men In the same fix. I have seen—oh, barbarous and cruel spectacle!- Anglo-Saxons, otherwise apparently civilised, cut off the points of asparagus and eat these points only with a fork, thus leaving the best part of the vegetable on their plates. As for artichokes they generally utterly defeat the attacks of those who trust only to the knife and fork. 

Fingers must he used for eating certain things notably asparagus, artichokes, fruit, olives, radishes, pastry, and even small fried fish; in short everything which will not dirty or grease the fingers, may be eaten with the fingers. For my own part, I prefer to eat lettuce salad with my fingers rather than a fork, and Queen Marie Antoinette and other ladies of the eighteenth century were of my way of thinking. If the ladies could only see how pretty is their gesture when their diaphanous forefinger and thumb grasps a leaf of delicate green lettuce and raises that leaf from the porcelain plate to their rosy lips, they would all immediately take to eating salad à la Marie Antoinette. Only bear in mind, good ladies, that if you do wish to eat lettuce salad with your fingers you must mix your salad with oil and vinegar, and not with that abominable ready-made white “salad dressing,” to look upon which is nauseating. 

May heaven preserve us from excessive Anglomania in matters of table service and eating. The English tend to complicate the eating tools far too much. They have too many forks for comfort, and the forms of them are too quaint for practical utility. Imitate Marie Antoinette, ladies: use your fingers more freely; eat decently, of course, but do not be the slaves of silly Anglomania or Newport crazes. To eat a pear or an apple conveniently, cut it into quarters, and peel each quarter in turn as you eat it. The peach, too, can be cut into quarters, if the eater is timid. Apricots do not need peeling, nor plums either. Who would be bold enough to peel a fresh fig or to touch such a delicate fruit, even with the purest silver instruments. — Marin Journal, 1890

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia©️ Etiquette Encyclopedia  

Gilded Age Newport Etiquette

Consuelo Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, was a member of the prominent American Vanderbilt family. Her marriage to Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough became an international symbol of the socially advantageous, but loveless, “Dollar Princess” marriages, which were so common during the Gilded Age.

Newport Etiquette

One must be very circumspect at Newport. Etiquette requires of men that they marry the daughter of a host or hostess, whenever an invitation is accepted to dine at a house where there is a marriageable heiress. At the Eastern watering places, it is claimed that the Duke of Marlborough would not have dared to become the guest of Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt had he not been seized with matrimonial designs upon Consuelo Vanderbilt.— Chicago News, 1895

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia