National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

The Gilded Age and Country Places
Just as Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's work of fiction figures prominently in
the examination of the Gilded Age, so does the work of Edith Wharton, whose descriptions of
the society and its habitats appear as a main feature in her writing. The Rise of Silas Lapham by
William Dean Howells tells the story of a newly rich industrialist building a house. Parallels
have been drawn between the fictional architect in Howell's work and the personalities and
working practices of Charles Follen McKim and Stanford White. 56 Howells was married to
William Rutherford Mead's sister. Henry James' writing also featured architecture and the
social implications of building, especially works such as The American Scene. 57
Many of the great estates of the Gilded Age received notice in the contemporary
architectural periodicals as they were being constructed. Architectural critics, writing in the
numerous magazines and books that focused on architecture and building, commented on the
phenomenon of the country house. Herbert Croly was one of the most important of these
critics. In 1902 he examined "Rich Men and Their Houses," in the Architectural Record. 58 He
noticed a difference in the country houses of the Gilded Age, one that was created by the
favorable economic conditions. He believed that the "mogul capitalists" built palatial houses as
a means of demonstrating their wealth and importance. These houses were set apart from
earlier agrarian manor houses, plantations, and cottages. Rather, "The primary symbolic
function of the rich man's house was the expression of individual character and economic
achievement." 59
Croly also believed that the nouveau riche patron used an eclectic mix of styles
because they lacked a cohesive past cultural identity. They used their country houses as a means
of providing a past. The furnishing of the country house with antiques from Europe enhanced
the creation of this image.
In Stately Homes in America, written the following year with Harry Desmond, Croly
expands upon the study of the country house and sees the spending of money as a common
thread. 60 Desmond and Croly see the "stately homes in America as" "the peculiar product, that
is, partly of the most recent American architectural ideas, and partly of the tastes, the ambitions,
the methods, and the resources of contemporary American captains of industry." 61
They liken
them to the atmosphere of Florentine and Venetian Palazzos, but go on to say that there is no
link between their displays of wealth and political power. 62 The authors go into great detail
about the demonstration of the owner's wealth as being the prime motivation for building. "Our
American residences, on the other hand, will not be understood unless it is frankly admitted that
they are built for men whose chief title to distinction is that they are rich, and that they are
designed by men whose architectural ideas are profoundly modified by the riches of their
clients." 63
Desmond and Croly seize upon the fact that the third generation of a wealthy family
focuses more on leisure and less on business. The Vanderbilts are specifically cited in this
56
Leland Roth, The Architecture of McKim, Mead & White (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 60-61.
57
Henry James, The American Scene (1907; reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 1994).
58
Herbert Croly, "Rich Men and Their Houses," The Architectural Record 12 (June 1902).
59
Hewitt, 19.
60
Harry Desmond and Herbert Croly, Stately Homes in America, From Colonial Times to the Present Day
(New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903).
61
Desmond and Croly, Stately Homes, 3.
62
Desmond and Croly, Stately Homes, 12.
63
Desmond and Croly, Stately Homes, 279.
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