The Gilded Age Years: Transforming America
Change can be exciting. It can also be unsettling. During the Gilded Age, change was happening at a pace unmatched in American history.
Americans went from horse-drawn to motor-driven, oil lamplight to electric light, farmwork to factory labor, handmade to assembly line-produced, all in a few tumultuous decades. Mass communications, easy long-distance travel, leisure time and recorded entertainment reached millions for the first time.
Besides familiar names like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Edison and Hunt, how much do you know about this period that transformed America? Or rather, how much don’t you know? Find out by taking a deep dive with the Preservation Society’s series “The Gilded Age Years: Transforming America.”
In this six-part series at The Breakers – a place that epitomizes the Gilded Age – we will journey through an era that gave shape to the country we know today. Our distinguished guest speakers will illuminate the period between the Civil War and the dawn of the 20th century, examining the people, events and inventions that forever shaped our nation’s cultural fabric.
Lectures
The Gilded Age: Past and Present
April 13, 2023
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Are we living in a second Gilded Age? The transformative years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries left a lasting legacy for our world today. Speaker: Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane
This event has ended.
The Gilded Years: The First Information Age
April 20, 2023
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Technologies like the telegraph, phonograph, photography and even the sewing machine revolutionized communication, connecting and shrinking the world. Speaker: Matthew Bird
This event has ended.
The Many Playgrounds of an Industrial Age
May 4, 2023
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Visit the heyday of Northeastern vacation spots from the Adirondacks to Coney Island, from Martha’s Vineyard to the Catskills, and from Saratoga to Newport. Speaker: Will B. Mackintosh
This event has ended.
Age of the Machine: The Fight to Reinvent Democracy in the Gilded Age
May 18, 2023
6:00pm – 7:00pm
The Gilded Age is notorious as a time of rampant political corruption. It was also a time when reformers ignited a reinvention of American democracy. Speaker: T.J. Stiles
This event has ended.
Creating a New American Image: Architecture, 1870-1910
June 1, 2023
6:00pm – 7:00pm
The first tall commercial buildings and the grandest of mansions are icons of the Gilded Age, but they were not the only architectural changes taking place. Speaker: Richard Guy Wilson
This event has ended.
Under the Gold-Plating: Everyday Americans in the Gilded Age
June 15, 2023
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Who were the everyday people in this period of industrialization and urbanization? What were their struggles and triumphs? Speaker: Nancy C. Unger
This event has ended.
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.
