The Matchmaker - Center Stage

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The Gilded Age & The Empire City by Drew Lichtenberg, Associate Dramaturg One of Dolly Levi’s wishes in The Matchmaker is that New York cease to be a city of “tired, nervous ants” and metamorphose into a happy city like her beloved Ephraim’s Vienna—a place of beauty and culture. It’s a trickier negotiation than she might care to admit. She knows it takes money; but, because this is farce, she doesn’t add that New York’s cultural growth, then as now, depends upon turning a blind eye to political corruption, ethnic hatred, and brutal extremes of wealth. Commonly known as the Gilded Age, the period between 1873 and 1893 was a kind one to Gotham City, which during these years began to emerge as the global metropolis it remains today. It was an era in which a confluence of factors— exponential population growth, massive waves of immigration, rapidly increasing industry—gave rise to visible landmarks and tangible conflicts. >>> Next Stage: The Matchmaker | 10
1863 New York is torn apart in July by the racially motivated Draft Riots. Untold numbers of African- Americans are murdered in the streets before the Union Army suppresses the agitators, many of whom are recent Irish immigrants enraged at being drafted into a war not of their making. 1871 Cornelius “The Commodore” Vanderbilt designs and builds Grand Central Depot at 42 nd Street and Park Avenue in order to compete with his archrival, the Pennsylvania Railroad. Vanderbilt would die in 1877, worth over 100 million dollars—at the time, the richest man in American history. 1871 Police open fire on an angry mob of Irish Catholics and Protestants in the city’s Orange riots, killing 51. Boss Tweed, ruler of the Tammany Hall political machine and Catholic sympathizer, is busted for graft by the New York Times as a direct result of the public outcry. 1872 The New York Elevated Railway Company is formed, expanding from a stretch on Greenwich Street and Ninth Avenue up to 30 th Street. By 1876, elevated railways extend from the Battery to 61 st Street. Horsedrawn carriages, as a result, are increasingly used by only the wealthy. 1873 Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, is completed in midtown Manhattan. Olmsted sought to emulate the idyllic landscapes and civic parks he saw on a trip to Europe in 1850. The park was conceived as a new, democratic kind of public space—a man-made nature where New Yorkers of every class could seek a respite from urban overcrowding. 1882 Working with the Central Labor Union of New York, carpenter Peter J. McGuire and machinist Matthew Maguire organized the country’s first Labor Day parade— 10,000 people take to the streets on September 5 th . By 1887, President Cleveland officially supports the holiday, perhaps wishing to divert attention from Chicago’s bloody Haymarket Riot of the year before. 1883 Alva and William Vanderbilt celebrate their new mansion on Fifth Avenue by spending a quarter of a million dollars on the most elaborate costume ball the city has yet seen. Sister-in-law Alice Vanderbilt comes dressed as “Electric Light” in a blinding white stain gown embroidered with diamonds, while her hostess Alva dresses as a Venetian princess, surrounded by a fluttering flock of real doves; Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor’s eventual appearance signifies that the upstart Vanderbilt clan has finally crashed the most tightly guarded social circle in the city. 1883 After 13 years of construction, the Brooklyn Bridge opens on May 24 th , to reported traffic of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people. The largest suspension bridge in the world at the time, it also establishes an unprecedented means of pedestrian travel between Manhattan and Brooklyn. 1886 To mark the American Centennial of 1876, France presents the United States with a gift: the Statue of Liberty. 1889 Jacob Riis, New York’s preeminent muckraking journalist, begins publishing a photographic essay on life in the tenement slums in Scribner’s Magazine. Published as a book the following year, How the Other Half Lives inspires a young Police Commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt to adopt reforms in the corrupt city government. 1890 New York garment workers win the right to unionize July 25 th after a seven-month strike, securing agreements for a closed shop and the firing of all scabs. 1892 The Ellis Island federal immigration station opens on New Year’s Day. Today, over 40 percent of America’s population can trace their ancestry through the small island. 1896 Captain Paul Boynton’s Sea Lion Park, the first amusement park at Coney Island, opens its doors, sparking a chain reaction of similar entertainments. A round-trip trolley ticket over the Brooklyn Bridge costs only 10 to 15 cents, making outerborough travel possible for the masses. 1898 The modern city of New York is formed, with Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx, and Queens uniting as the Five Boroughs. 1902 Quaker businessman R.H. Macy sells his New York department store to Isidor and Nathan Strauss, who move Macy’s from “the Ladies Mile” on 14 th Street to its present-day home at Herald Square, on the corner of 34 th Street and Broadway. 1904 The New York City underground subway system opens, the second in the country after Boston’s. Next Stage: The Matchmaker | 11
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