If you have been watching HBO’s drama The Gilded Age, you already know the show drips with opulence. But the real Gilded Age that stretch of American history from roughly the late 1870s to the late 1890s was something else entirely. The term itself was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner as the title of their 1873 satirical novel.
It was an era of explosive economic growth, fast industrialization, political corruption, and staggering inequality. A few people became extraordinarily rich while many others struggled. And those wealthy families made sure everyone knew it, starting with what they kept in their homes.
Here is a look at five items that said loud and clear: we have made it.
Towering Ferns
It sounds unlikely today, but ferns were a full-blown status symbol among the wealthy in the late nineteenth century. Collecting them became so popular that writer Charles Kingsley coined a term for it: fern fever.
Large indoor ferns and other grand houseplants were meant to signal that the owner was both cultured and connected to the natural world. Having them in your parlor told visitors everything they needed to know about what kind of household they had just walked into.
A Piano
Music mattered enormously in Gilded Age society. It was seen as proof of taste, education, and refinement. Many of the wealthiest families of the era were patrons of arts organizations, including those devoted to music.
Owning a piano at home took things a step further. It said you had the money to buy one and the space to show it off. That combination was the point. Just how valuable these instruments were considered is still evident today. One fine Gilded Age piano, designed by nineteenth-century painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema, sold at auction for $1.2 million in 1997.
Gilded Tea Sets
Even afternoon tea was a chance to show off. Tea sets of the era: cups, cream jugs, sugar tongs, spoons, were sometimes made with elaborate enamel work in rich jewel-like colors. The whole point was to make something as ordinary as a cup of tea look anything but ordinary.
The name of the age said it all. These families were drawn to everything that shimmered and glittered, right down to the table setting.
A Telephone
The telephone was the cutting-edge technology of its day. Antonio Meucci invented the first one in 1849, and Alexander Graham Bell received the first U.S. patent in 1876. But for years after that, owning one was simply out of reach for most families; the cost was far too high.
Wealthy Gilded Age households could afford them, though. Having a phone in your home was yet another way to signal your place in society. It also carried real social power. Ordinary families could not reach you by telephone because ordinary families did not have one either.
Hidden Doors
Grand homes of the Gilded Age employed large household staffs to keep everything running. But the wealthy of that era preferred their servants to stay out of sight. Houses were designed with that in mind.
Hidden doors were built throughout these homes to allow staff to move around without being noticed. Some were tucked behind mirrors. The Biltmore Estate, built by a member of the Vanderbilt family, is one well-known example that still has its hidden doors and passages intact. Lynnewood Hall is another.
It is a strange little detail, but it says a lot about how that world worked. The help was everywhere. And nowhere, all at once.
