Cocktail Culture in the Gilded Age
The “Golden Age of Cocktails” blossomed in the decades after the Civil War, when rapid industrialization led to the accumulation of staggering wealth for the very few and great prosperity for a burgeoning middle class. From the 1870s through the 1910s, discriminating palates delighted in new inventions dubbed cocktails. In New York, New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco and Newport, found that a whiskey or gin drink cooled with ice and blended with fruit or other flavorings enhanced dinner parties and sporting events, luncheons, balls, ocean crossings and cross-country sojourns by rail. The Gilded Age beckons us to visit its cocktail culture, when bartenders became the Edisons of libations and the forefathers of classic cocktails of today: the Martini, Manhattan, Old-Fashioned and many more. A signature cocktail from Tichi’s book will be served at the reception after the lecture and the author will be available for a book signing.
Cecelia Tichi is an award-winning teacher and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Her books span U.S. literature and culture from the 17th century through recent times, including a biography of Jack London and a book, “Civic Passions,” profiling seven activists in the tumultuous years of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era of the 1910s. Tichi’s books have been reviewed in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Publishers’ Weekly and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by the Rockefeller and Mellon Foundations, and she has held the Chair in Modern Culture at the Library of Congress. She has lectured widely in the U.S. and internationally from Europe to East Asia. Tichi’s research and teaching inspired “What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age,” followed by “Gilded Age Cocktails” and “Jazz Age Cocktails,” which set the stage for her mystery crime novels—the “Val and Roddy DeVere Gilded Age Series” that boasts “Gilded” in each title—the first, “A Gilded Death,” is set in Newport in the summer of 1898.
More Tours, Events & Exhibitions
Beneath The Breakers Tour
Daily
10:00am
Explore the underground systems that made this great house a marvel of technology for its time.
The Breakers Third Floor Preservation in Progress Tour
Daily
2:00pm
For the first time in the 129-year history of The Breakers, the private third-floor family space occupied by generations of Vanderbilts is open for public tours.
Servant Life Tour
Daily
10 am and 2 pm
See and hear how the other half lived. This tour will highlight the stories of some of the men and women who worked to service the social whirl of Newport during the Gilded Age.
Lifting the Curtain: Behind the Scenes of Museum Work
January 23 – April 10, 2025
11:00am – 12:30pm
This series of programs, listed below, offers glimpses into the work that happens behind the scenes at the Newport Mansions, including curatorial, conservation, preservation, historical research and interpretation.
