The so-called Gilded Age mansions were built in the United States by some of the richest people in the country during in the period between 1870 and the 1920s.

Raised by the nation's industrial, financial and commercial elite who amassed great fortunes coinciding with an era of expansion of the railroads, steel and fossil fuels industries, economic, technical and scientific progress, and a complete lack of personal income tax. This made possible the very rich to build true "palaces" in some cases, designed by prominent architects of its day and decorated with antiquities, furnitures, collectibles and works of art, many imported from Europe.

This small group of nouveau riche, entrepreneur citizens of a relatively young country found context and meaning for their lives and good fortune by thinking of themselves as heirs of a great Western Tradition. They traced their cultural lineage from the Greeks, through the Roman Empire, to the European Renaissance. America's upper classes and merchant classes traveled the world visiting the great European cities and the ancient sites of the Mediterranean, as part of a Grand Tour, collecting and honoring their western cultural heritage. In their travels abroad they also admired the estates of the European nobility and seeing themselves as the American "nobility", they wished to emulate the old world dwellings in American soil.

All these houses are "temples" of social ritual of 19th-century high society, they are the result of the particularization of space, in that a sequence of rooms are separated and intended for a specific sort of activity, such as dining room for gala dinners, ballroom, library, etc.

These elaborate bastions of wealth and power played a social role, made for impressing, entertaining and receiving guests. Relatively few in number and geographically dispersed, the majority were constructed in a variety of European architectural and decorative styles from different times and countries, such as France, England or Italy.

In cinema, the Gilded Age society and mansions are accurately portrayed in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993), which was itself based on Edith Wharton's 1920 novel of the same name.

California

• Mark Hopkins Mansion, 1878 (destroyed by fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake)
• Hearst Castle, San Simeon, CA, built by William Randolph Hearst. Julia Morgan, Architect, 1919-1947, added to National Register of Historic Places in 1957

Colorado

• Richthofen Castle, 1887

Florida

Miami

• Villa Vizcaya, Miami Dade Art Museum

Palm Beach

• Mar-a-Lago, 1924
• Whitehall (Henry M. Flagler House), 1902

Sarasota

• Cà d' Zan (John Ringling Mansion), 1926

Illinois

• Nickerson House, 1883
• Palmer Mansion, 1885 (demolished 1950)

Massachusetts

• Bellefontaine Mansion, 1912
• Searles Castle, 1888
• Ventfort Hall, 1893
• The Mount, 1902
• Castle Hill (Ipswich, Massachusetts), 1926

Minnesota

• James J. Hill House, 1891

New Jersey

• Florham, 1893

New York

• Beechwood, 1780, enlarged in the 1890s
• Mills Mansion (Staatsburgh), 1832, enlarged in 1895/96
• Lyndhurst, 1838
• Olana, 1872
• Glenview (now part of the Hudson River Museum), 1877
• Rockwood Hall, 1886
• Estherwood, 1894
• Woodlea (now Sleepy Hollow Country Club), 1895
• Indian Neck Hall, 1897
• Hyde Park (the Frederick W. Vanderbilt Mansion), 1899
• Waldheim, 1901
• Harbor Hill, 1902 (demolished)
• Arden, 1909
• Kykuit, 1913
• Oheka Castle, 1919
• Glen Tonche, 1928

New York City

• Petit Chateau, 1882 (demolished)
• Cornelius Vanderbilt II House, 1883 (demolished)
• Henry T. Sloane House, 1894
• Mrs. William B. Astor House, 1896 (demolished)
• Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo House, 1898
• Oliver Gould Jennings House, 1898
• Andrew Carnegie Mansion, 1901

North Carolina

• Biltmore, 1895

Pennsylvania

• Grey Towers, 1896
• Cairnwood, 1895
• Elstowe Manor, 1898
• Lynnewood Hall, 1900
• Whitemarsh Hall, 1921 (demolished 1980)

Rhode Island

Newport

• Beechwood, 1851 (remodelled in the 1880s)
• Chateau-sur-Mer, 1852 (remodelled and redecorated in the 1870s)
• Marble House, 1892
• McAuley Hall, 1882
• Ochre Court, 1892
• Rough Point, 1892
• Belcourt, 1894
• The Breakers, 1895
• The Elms, 1901
• Vernon Court, 1901
• Rosecliff, 1902

Virginia

• Agecroft Hall, 1926
• Cedar Hall, 1906 (demolished 1976)
• Ellerslie, 1856 (extensively remodeled in 1910)
• Maymont, 1893
• P. D. Gwaltney Jr. House, 1901
• Roseland Manor, 1887 (burned 1985)
• Swannaoa, 1912
• Virginia House, 1925

Washington, DC

• Anderson House, 1905
• Townsend House, 1901

Wisconsin

• Pabst Mansion, 1892

See also

• American architecture

References