Contents

Splendors of the Gilded Age

Mrs. Astor Speaks

Millionaires’ Row

Fifth Avenue Mansions

Decoration of Houses

Servants and Their Duties

Convenience or Contraption

Electric Lighting

Elevators

Telephone

Competitive Consumption

Ladies’ Mile

Gentlemen’s Emporia

Tea Rooms and Luncheons

Best Dressed

The Hat Makes the Man

The Walking Stick: The Essential Gentleman’s Accessory

The Plume Trade, or, Decorating with Nature

Color Harmony

For All Occasions

Well Behaved

Ward McAllister, Autocrat of Conduct

How to Navigate a Public Encounter

Correspondence

Cards, Visits, and Calls

Parties and Balls

Parties

Balls

Gilded Age “Cinderella”

Seen but Not Heard

What They Read

Dinner Is Served

The Proper Place Setting

New York’s Elegant Restaurants

Delmonico’s

Sherry’s

The Lobster: From Prison Fare to Haute Cuisine

Enter Escoffier

A Black-Tie Dinner on Horseback

The Grain and the Grape

Mrs. Astor’s Annual Ball

The Social Set

To See and Be Seen

Peacock Alley

The Palm Court

Theater and Opera

Stage-Door Johnny

Central Park

Club Life

Newport

Slumming It: Entertainment on the Lower East Side

The Sporting Life

Boating

Polo

Bathing

Tennis

Archery and Croquet

Golf

Cycling

Getting There

Horse Power

Motor Cars

Private Rail Cars

Steamships

Yachts

Money Talks

Gospels of Wealth

Virtues of Free Enterprise

On Philanthropy

Wall Street

Top-Drawer Schools

For Girls

For Boys

Dollar Princesses

Newspaper Wars

The Whiff of Scandal

Divorce and Mrs. Astor

Inexcusable

Deadly Triangle: Nesbit, White, Thaw

On the Scene: Boldface Names in New York

Diamond Jim Brady (1856–1917)

Nellie Bly (1864–1922)

Jack London (1876–1916)

Lillian Russell (1860–1922)

Buffalo Bill (1846–1917)

Front-Page Girls

Muckrakers

Funerals

Mrs. Astor’s Four Hundred

Acknowledgments

Selected Sources

Illustration Credits

About the Author