Book Description
2005 Coalition of Visionary Resources (COVR) Winner of Best Interactive Sideline category!
Heralding archetypal elements of traditional Tarot, The Gilded Tarot is teeming with shimmering, classic imagery. High priestesses in flowing robes, wise emperors, knights on majestic steeds, mystics wielding magical tools, and other intriguing characters from medieval times abound in the Major and Minor Arcana. This richly colored, easy-to-use deck also features standard symbols for the card suits--swords, cups, wands, and pentacles--which provides universal appeal.
This kit also includes The Gilded Tarot Companion, a clear and insightful guidebook to the deck's structure and each card's significance.
Customer Reviews:
I Love This Deck!.......2007-08-06
There is just something about the beauty of this deck! I feel completely connected to it and this is my favorite deck to use in readings. It has also proven itself time and time again very dependable to me.
(As a side note, I also highly recommend Mr. Marchetti's Tarot of Dreams!.)
Another craptacular deck from Lllewelyn.......2007-07-28
All I ever hear about this deck is how beautiful it is and blah blah blah. Please. This is just another RWS clone. Great for beginners, but not for people who are looking to add something more original to their Tarot collections.
The overall artwork is okay, but my biggest beef is with some of the minors with people being depicted in it (esp. the court cards). This is a CG deck, right? While the Majors are well put together, some of the faces on the characters in the minors do not look like they've been digitally rendered. In some cases they look like they've been cut and pasted onto the bodies. I find that rather half-@$$ed. If you're going to make a CG deck with digitally rendered people, why not go the whole way?
I stear clear of Llewelyn's stuff (with the exception of some of the decks from Lo Scarabeo) because they seem to produce a lot of products that are either rehash the same crap from most other books or have no meaning whatsoever. Buyer beware.
Visually pleasing but lacks depth.......2007-07-16
I bought this deck because I was drawn to the beautiful images. However I don't use it for a few reasons. One being that although it is very attractive, I don't feel I am learning from it and it doesn't encourage my intuition. Secondly, the cards are quite flimsy and small compared with the other decks I have (Crowley Thoth, Robin Hood and Mythic Tarot) and slide out of my hands very easily. So all in all it is a nice addition to my collection from the artistic standpoint but I prefer the other decks I own.
Awesome deck!.......2007-06-29
This is my favorite tarot cards deck. The cards are just beautiful and a joy to look at and read. I am an intermediate reader and I only read for myself. I own several decks among the Tarot of Marseilles, the Legend deck, Lover's Tarot and the Robin Wood deck but I get the most amazing accurate readings from the Gilded Tarot deck.
I do not use the book that came with the deck. For explanations and to read my readings I use the book Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Luis. These two combined along with my intuition work great for me.
Beautiful.......2007-05-09
These cards are beautifully rendered and very richly colored. Being a beginner in the art of Tarot, I find them to be fairly intuitive to read as opposed to some decks that are just plain out there.
Book Description
In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan—Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain—vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age.
Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior.
Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent introduction to "the 400", the Astors, and the rise of the grand hotels.......2006-11-30
This book is an excellent introduction to the history of "the 400" (or "the Four Hundred") and the Astor family for the many people who seek such information. Many people ask me for more information about "the 400" because my novel, "Chasing the 400", deals with the African American community's social interpretation of "the 400" during the 1950's. At that time, "the 400" was a term that was used to characterize the Black Bourgeoisie, the same as the term was used to characterize the New York Gilded Age social elite.
I disagree with Kaplan that people largely seemed to not care about "the 400" after Carolyn Astor's death or disappearance from prominence in New York society. "The 400" as the social elite lived on long after Carolyn Astor's grand entertaining, and many groups of people patterned their social groups after Mrs. Astor's exclusivity. In my novel, I explain "the 400" in New York society and in 1950s Philadelphia's Black Bourgeoisie this way: "The women displayed as colored society were the ladies of 'the 400', an exclusive, informal collection of Philadelphia's black bourgeoise, the talented tenth, the doctors, lawyers and other successful colored businessmen and their wives. This exclusive group patterned themselves after "the Four Hundred", the phrase coined in the late 1800's by New York socialite Mrs. William Astor and her friends to symbolize upper crust society--the truly worthy 400 people who could fit into the ballroom of Mrs. Astor's New York home. Like Mrs. Astor's Four Hundred, Philadelphia's colored 400 attended a seemingly endless round of balls, lunches, fashion shows and cocktail soirees. Mrs. Donald Butcher, given name Harriet, ruled the colored 400 which, in reality, had only about 50 people who were truly worthy. Donald Butcher made a fortune operating the largest colored funeral home in Philadelphia, and Harriet made a life running colored society."
More information about groups that might be considered to be the modern day "Four Hundred" in the African American community, such as The Links, Jack & Jill and Sigma Pi Phi--the Boule, and "Chasing the 400" can be found on my Amazon page. Malcom X, in "The Autobiography of Malcom X", also talks about "the 400" in Boston's African American community.
Kaplan's discussion of how and why the Astor's concieved and built New York's grandest hotels is also fascinating. We take the grand hotel for granted today, but Kaplan explains how such hotels were truly revolutionary and transformed society at that time. Modern day real estate investors might find inspiration in Kaplan's detailed discussions of how the Astors used real estate to build their great wealth, working on one deal after another, not satisfied with more wealth than most of us could even imagine.
Hotel Mania.......2006-11-27
This book, while initially giving the impression of being a recounting of the Astor family, actually turns into a history of hotels in New York City built by wealthy people. As a biography it was well done, but as a history of the hotels it is extremely interesting. There are some asides about the inter-family feuds of the Astors, and it mentions, in passing, the death of John Jacob IV on the Titanic (perhaps more should have been said about this). To those interested in the early history of New York, and its famous hotels, this is required reading!
Slim volume promises much delivers little .......2006-09-05
When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age by Justin Kaplan is a bit of a disappointment. From the title and description, I was looking for a biography of the Astor family along with a taste of history about the times they lived in. While there is some brief biographical information in the book, much of it is focused on the hotels they (and others) built. Pages are allotted to the Palmer House in Chicago (which they didn't build), but far less to John Jacob Astor's death on the Titanic. His scandalous divorce and marriage to a much younger woman are also glossed over. His uncle William Waldorf Astor's life is covered in far greater detail, but even he doesn't get full coverage. Gossipy bits and pieces of the times are dropped here and there. Kaplan goes overboard in quoting Henry James in his eloquence about the beauty of hotels. There are pages of quotes from James, often repeated. The book meanders and repeats itself as well. I suppose not much should be expected from such a slim volume, but I was hoping for more.
Mostly history.......2006-08-09
Book was not what I expected. Does not delve into characters,but more or less who begot who and rivalries, hotel building, and so on. If you're looking for character development or revelation, this is not what you want.
Lacks Focus.......2006-08-03
The Astors are an iconic American family, rising from immigrant roots to great wealth and aristocratic pretensions, undermined by their own social ambition and self-imposed isolation and finally, in later generations, fading from economic and social prominence. (104 year-old Brooke Astor, the widow of Vincent, is the last multi-millionaire Astor, and will leave no Astor heirs.) Yet this book purports to be, not about the Astors, but about the great hotels that they conceived and built, including such landmarks as the old Waldorf-Astoria, The Astor and the St. Regis. As such, the book lacks focus and is poorly integrated; it's not quite a bio of the Astors, since it's character portraits are superficial, but it's not really about the great hotels either, because it limits that story to the role played by the Astors. The result is disjointed and, occasionally, boring. This author knows alot about the Astors and would have done better to write a straightforward biography or family history.
Book Description
Post-Civil War New York City is the battleground of the American dream. In this era of free love, emerging rights of women, and brutal sexual repression, Freydeh, a spirited young Jewish immigrant, toils at different jobs to earn passage to America for her family. Learning that her younger sister is adrift somewhere in the city, she begins a determined search that carries her from tenement to brothel to prison—as her story interweaves with those of some of the epoch's most notorious figures: Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Susan B. Anthony; sexual freedom activist Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president; and Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose censorship laws are still on the books.
In the tradition of her bestselling World War II epic Gone to Soldiers, Marge Piercy once again re-creates a turbulent period in American history and explores changing attitudes in a land of sacrifice, suffering, promise, and reward.
Customer Reviews:
Quasi-Fictitious, Real Life Characters.......2007-08-08
Utterly fascinating. An exceptional book.
Weaves truth with fiction, making for a very informative, highly readable historical account of those years (in New York) right after the Civil War, and into Reconstruction (although Reconstruction is not discussed an any great length here, the well-read individual who pursues her/his interest in the Civil War and its aftermath may find some points of comparison and contrast when comparing the Reconstruction years in New York City with those in the South).
This narrative contains vivid descriptions of this period of immigration of millions of individuals who endured lives of varying degrees of poverty (much of it abject) and livelihoods of varying degrees on the streets of New York, some of it good -- much of it harsh, AND inventive.
It also brings to the fore the "Robber Barons" and the elite Rich who raced through Central Park and visited their madams and houses of prostitution -- and Women's Suffrage; initially in the background, then racing to the forefront, with varying degrees of success with setbacks, division, and imprisonment -- struggling along, then gathering speed and sureness, then splitting along divided lines, yet still gaining momentum.
And all through this narrative one finds Anthony Comstock, his notorious ways, and the Comstock Laws, meddling in and ruining the lives of many honest and dishonest shopkeepers and women trying to earn their daily bread by making condoms or selling or distributing birth control pamphlets.
The descriptions of the street gangs, the dirt and squalor, the honest individuals trying to make a living, the Woodhull sisters and their cunning ability to reach the hearts and minds and purses of those in power, the various personalities inhabiting the alleys and shacks, the 5th Avenue "castles" and whorehouses -- and then the fictional but highly possible life and quests of Freydeh and her orphans -- keeps the reader spellbound.
There is a wealth of information here about Women's Suffrage in the early days; initially Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony - two opposites who work together nonetheless, as major agents for change and reform, AND the Woodhull sisters, advocates of Free Love -- who started the first successful stockbrokerage run by women (scans of their newsletters can be found on the Internet) who then joined forces for a while with those two formidable suffragettes, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony (and caused a scandal among the other Suffragettes because of their Free Love stance).
I consider this book not only a great "read", but also fertile grounds and a springboard for further research into Women's Suffrage and the immigrant experience in New York City in that period immediately after the Civil War.
Terrific Read.......2007-07-05
Most exciting historical novel I've read in ages, set in an unusual time, just after the Civil War. It follows several very different people, including the leading "first wave" feminists Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Victoria Woodhull, along with the puritannical moral campaigner Anthony Comstock, and a struggling recent Jewish immigrant and her family. I could hardly put the book down as it ranged from one group of characters to another, and I found it just delicious. Other reviewers have felt that the dialogue was wooden, but it didn't bother me in the least, and it's an easy read, not a sociology text. It's so important to be reminded how bad life was for women and how hard women had to fight to change the laws and society. Well-written and of interest to feminists, those interested in the 19th century spiritualist movement, and the experiences of immigrants in New York City.
Great Read -Women Lives in Post-Civil War Times.......2007-05-29
I really enjoyed reading Sex Wars. Many of the characters were real people (especially women) fighting to live out their goals and dreams in the 1870's and 1880's. When I finished the book I had to immediately look up the real life stories of Victoria Woodhull (notorious free love speaker, stockbroker and medium), Anthony Comstock (fighter of profanity who goes too far), Susan Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Vanderbilt. The fictional character of Freydah was great too. She really made me imagine what it would be like to be an immigrant back in the late 1800's -as a woman who lost her spouse, as a non native speaker, without spousal support, without money, and without laws protecting her from harm and unfairness, and as someone who had to work tirelessly just to make it and fight against prejudice and the social grain. -How different life was for the single woman and the married woman. This book truly highlights this.
I liked the structure of the book and found it suspenseful. Each chapter was from a different character's point of view and would then rotate back to each character again chapter by chapter. This book helped me to see a glimpse of what America was like during this time period. It helps one see how the events and attitudes of the past frame and contribute to the politics and attitudes that we have today -especially concerning women. It is so interesting to think about the people who come before us. The only things I found not so great: I felt Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who are incredible women to me could have been written about a little more interestingly.
was ok.......2007-01-10
not what i expected as far as the story goes, but in excellent condition
Portrays the zest of a time of great change!.......2006-04-21
Piercy paints a portrait of women who were intelligent and gutsy in a time that did not reward those qualities in women. Of course we don't hear much about them now because history under-reports the feats of women. The fact that these women thought for themselves and led innovative lives was amazing considering the oppression that was the norm.
Some of the characters in this story were historic figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Comstock. Others were lesser known figures such as the psychic turned candidate for president Victoria Woodhull. I have to admit I was more interested in Woodhull and some of the fictional characters. It really didn't work to have the fictional and non-fictional characters together. I also didn't like the numerous head changes--I wanted to stick with the one story and see what happened. With so much shifting from on story to another I did not attach to or get to know any of the characters.
A really interesting book despite some flaws and well worth a read. It portrays the zest of a time of great change in American history.
Average customer rating:
- Useful resource for Herter furniture research
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Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age
N. Y.) Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York
Manufacturer: Harry N Abrams
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ASIN: 0810934264 |
Customer Reviews:
Useful resource for Herter furniture research.......1998-07-31
This book is a compendium of information related to late 19th century furniture makers. Photographs and references are essential to research of the topic. Particularly helpful is the chronology at end of book. Well-researched and photographed.
Customer Reviews:
QUITE A TOME.......2007-01-22
This book is the very definition of comprehensive, this book really hashes out beautiful Guilded Age New York. It is to be lamented that so many of these gorgeous buildings are no longer extant, but at least these wonderful archival images are available. As you walk around NYC today, you see glimpses of the grandeur that once pervaded the city, but this book conjures up the ghosts of an Age of unimaginable wealth and unparalled craftsmanship. High recommended to one and all.
New York architecture in the late 1800s.......2001-11-18
With over 1100 pages, this book was so difficult to handle physically, that it hampered my enjoyment of this epic-length volume. On the other hand, the book is a bargain in terms of cents per page! Photos average more than one per page; however, the quality of photographic reproduction is frequently very disappointing (even when compared to Stern's 'New York 1900,' which also uses very old photographs). There are approximately 75 floor plans, with most page space used for the less-than-rivetting text. Chapters are divided by building type. A surprising amount of page space is consumed by illustrations of entries in architectural competitions (Union League Club and Cathedral of St. John the Divine).
I was disappointed........2000-01-04
This period was covered in New York 1900, which provided background material from 1876 and before. Although New York 1880 is longer than New York 1900, it seemed to me to be a padding of what had already been said in a more succinct and more readable way in the first book of the series (NY 1900).As for the length, New York 1880 badly needs an editor.
A Wonderful fabulous work of scholarship on New York City.......1999-09-22
While it is too heavy to lug around, NY 1880 is an eye popping journey into New York of 120 or so years ago. There are over 1,200 photographs and 99 pages of footnotes. Anyone interested in seeing what this wonderful city was like a generation before the First World War is strongly urged to grab this book. So much of what this book is about is no longer standing - churches, synagogues, clubs, apartments, etc.
Buy it!! This is the best of the 4 books in the series (NY 1880, NY 1900, NY 1930 and NY 1960) with NY 2000 to come in a few years.
Average customer rating:
- Very Disappointing & Frustrating
- Scholarly and definitive, but tedious
- Fascinating but not quite what I expected...
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Mrs. Astor's New York: Money and Power in a Gilded Age
Eric Homberger
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Similar Items:
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The Opulent Interiors of the Gilded Age: All 203 Photographs from Artistic Houses, with New Text
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First Four Hundred : New York and the Gilded Age
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When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age
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The Astors: A Family Chronicle of Pomp and Power
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Fortune's Children
ASIN: 0300095015 |
Book Description
Mrs. Astor, undisputed queen of New York society in the decades before the First World War, used her prestige to create a social aristocracy of unparalleled extravagance and exclusivity. Her story, which reads like a novel by Edith Wharton, sheds important new light on the origins, lifestyle, and social competitiveness of this aristocracy, and it is told here with vigor and elegance by Eric Homberger. Homberger argues that the arrival in New York of a tidal wave of new wealth after the Civil War pushed the city's old families into a redefinition of their position, one that now included public visibility. Mrs. Astor presided over this new era, helping to create the Patriarchs, whose annual balls were the most sought after social events of the era, and establishing the definitive list of the socially acceptable families. Homberger's diverting account of the lives of New York's high society recreates this world and shows how its members became America's first celebrities.
Customer Reviews:
Very Disappointing & Frustrating.......2006-07-16
I've been reading about the Gilded Age and turned to this book with great expectations that have been dashed. How could the editor have let the book go through as it is? Yes, it's a beautiful package and well-enough written (though hardly an Edith Wharton novel as one reviewer said, as quoted on the back cover). The book's title is completely deceptive. A good third of the book is not about the Gilded Age at all, but goes back to the 1800-1850 period and sometimes in tedious detail. It does not help me at all to know the customs involved in women making calls upon other women in 1800 when those customs had changed by the late 19th century. While one can make a case that the roots of the Gilded Age need to be exposed, you don't have to go that far back and into that much detail. The First Four Hundred, which this author sneers at in a footnote, is far more focused and helpful, and a much better source of information, though this book's opening chapter was fascinating.
Scholarly and definitive, but tedious.......2003-12-01
MRS. ASTOR'S NEW YORK deservedly will become the definitive work regarding the City of New York and, specifically, its upper class, during that period of the 19th Century known as the "Gilded Age."
As such, this book is as much about the evolution of the modern city as it is about the robber barons who shaped the era. The research is impeccable and almost ponderously thorough.
The title, however, is somewhat misleading, as the volume is does not focus on Mrs. Astor individually but, rather, on what she meant to her contemporaries in terms of being a symbol and an inspiration as to how one should live.
Eric Homberger is an excellent writer. Yet the mass of information he presents, albeit significant, is too tedious to make for an entertaining read. As a work of historical record, however, MRS. ASTOR'S NEW YORK is invaluable.
Fascinating but not quite what I expected..........2002-12-25
This book really doesn't seem to be about Mrs. Astor or even the daily world she lived in, so much as it is about the History of New York. In the first several chapters the author chronicles lucidly, but perfunctorily, the attachments, financial and domestic, and above all architectural and urban of several wealthy New York families. From the earliest times post the Revolution, New York society had exceedingly difficult standards with some families struggling to get into society or stay in, and others struggling to keep some of those families, or individuals out. Quickly a dichotomy reveals itself between those who have money, and those who have a family line stretching back to Adam, with the power of money vs. lineage constantly alternating, though lineage always seems to have a slightly upper hand, or think it does. That mentality as expressed by the evolution of neighborhoods emerges for the first two thirds of the book. Homberger does a fascinating study of the ascendancies and declines of such old neighborhoods such as St Johns Park and Bond street and how families strategically placed themselves in these neighborhoods, and strategically sold out, devoting themselves to building new mansions elsewhere, always further North, taking the money, and lineage, with them. In quick time these mansions were also razed to make room for the new. There are in fact many photographs of mansions which became other mansions or Grand Hotels. Into this arena of inadvertant social mobility emerges the social conservatism of Ward MacAllister, commentator, arbiter and arranger of the social scene, and his social Boss, Mrs. Astor herself. MacAllister seems to have had a ruthless and iron grip but to have stumbled when he wrote a a Truman Capote-like expose of his social experiences called "Society as I have found it," dubbed by his jeerers "Society as it has found me out." Homberger doesn't treat MacAllister's rise and fall in narrative form, but constantly refers back to it, in fact he introduces us to MacAllister with his funeral. He also introduces us to Mrs. Astor, at the end of the book, with the end of her days, as a woman living in a mimicry haze of the past. Perhaps for this reason, the portrait of Mrs. Astor never quite takes off. One learns a few things about her life, but there don't seem to be any notable turning points, and there are only rare depictions of her actually interfering in society which is extremely strange. We never quite see her promoting, demoting or blocking entrance into the sacred class as much as we expect her to. About the last thing we see her do is make an exception for a friend who married a Jewish banker, because she likes her, but even that is anti-climactic. While, the book itself is fascinating in its depiction of New York, and the history of its founding elite, the main leader, Mrs. Astor, of the society emerges as nearly a phantom, almost an absence more than a presence. (If you're going to read about the cream, you may as well read about the dregs in Luc Sante's Low Life.)
Book Description
A narrative history that examines what made Newport an important city starting in the colonial era and leading on to today.
Customer Reviews:
Brains & Beauty.......2007-09-30
It is unusual for a history to be visually engaging or for a coffee table book to have intellectual content. This is one of the very rare books published today that is both beautiful and brainy.
In the late 17th century the idea of religious freedom was an alien idea not only around the world but here in the North American too. In Massachusetts they were hanging people for the high crime of being Quakers ( I kid you not...).
This book tells the story (in an extremely readable fashion) of the rare circumstances that led to the rise of the concept of religious freedom in a town that is now an out of the way genteel resort, but which was in its day one of the most important early American settlements.
As intellectually engaging as it is interesting, this book is a great acquisition for anyone interested in American history, colonial architecture or religious freedom. In this day and age, with the challenges facing the country and world, a reminder of the great benefits of religious tolerance could not be better timed or more needed.
Recommended by a sea captain!.......2007-09-24
I've actually bought 2 of these books for Xmas gifts. They were recommended by the captain of a sailboat we chartered in Newport, R.I. I have not removed the plastic wrapping, but our captain highly recommended the book for anyone who enjoys R.I. The cover is beautiful. I would buy as a coffee table book just for that! A perfect gift for those people who have everything. Newport: A Lively Experiment 1639-1969
unusually lively history.......2007-08-15
Although this looks like another expensive coffee table book, it's also a very well-written and drama filled history of America's founding and revolution and development with Newport as the orientation point. The hardships of 17th century life, the privations of the Revolution, are described in living detail, as well as the resort life of the nineteenth century when Newport became the Queen of Resorts. If you've ever been to Newport or Rhode Island and liked it, a must. Many thanks for Gilbert Kahn and John Noffo Kahn for supporting the research for what has turned out to be a hard-to-put-down history book. Beautifully written and illustrated with primary sources.
Gorgeously produced volume about a small town that played a large part in building America.......2007-05-04
This is a beautiful art book quality edition of the history of Newport, Rhode Island. I can't think of many small towns that deserve such a lavishly produced volume, especially one with a present-day population of fewer than 30,000 people. However, this small community had a very large impact on the ideas of religious freedom and civil government.
While this book has many beautiful reproductions of paintings of the town, portraits of people who played a part in Newport's history, maps, photographs, and other illustrations, it is also a book of well-written text. The author is Rockwell Stensrud whose background as a novelist and journalist has prepared him well for this project. "Newport - a Lively Experiment" is published by the Redwood Library, which is more than 250 years old and the oldest lending library in the United States. This is a volume to be proud of. Anyone interested in Newport, Rhode Island, Colonial America, and the how this town came through its ups and downs from its founding in 1639 until today should get a copy for their library.
The founding of Newport is fascinating and covered well in this book. The subtitle of the book, a lively experiment, comes from the charter granted by Charles II on July 8, 1663. It refers to its being a living experiment that "a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained, and that among our English subjects, with a full liberty in religious concernments; and that true piety rightly grounded upon gospel principles, will give the best and greatest security to sovereignty, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to true loyalty ..."
As noted earlier, Newport was founded in 1639 by nine men who are still well remembered in the history the city today (all the streets and places named after them sure help). There were jealousies, conflicts, and lots of energy. About half of this book covers the colonial and Revolutionary periods. Newport flourished until the destructive activity of the Revolutionary War heavily involved the city. It had recovered by the mid-nineteenth century and near the turn of the twentieth, it had become favored among the ultra wealthy. There are still many beautiful mansions there today. However, the structures of the founding were fast disappearing. There was also a hurricane in 1938.
About this time, Doris Duke and others decided to do what they could to preserve and restore what they considered to be treasures. At the time, not many others did. Now we all enjoy seeing the fruits of their hard work and expenditures.
This is a very richly done, informative, and enjoyable book of American history.
Book Description
This social history documents 175 years of America's most glorious main street. Jerry E. Patterson explores the avenue from its beginning, journeying uptown from Greenwich Village to Harlem and highlighting such famous landmarks along the way as the Washington Square Arch, the Flatiron Building, the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Rockefeller Center, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Patterson's tour of Fifth Avenue is not limited to famous points of interest, but explores the avenue's colorful history as well. The lore surrounding the lives and achievements of notable Manhattanites - from the descendants of the island's earliest Dutch settlers to such luminous American figures as Stanford White, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton - vividly imbues Fifth Avenue: The Best Address.
Book Description
The epic story of the struggle to connect New York City to the rest of the nation
The demolition of Penn Station in 1963 destroyed not just a soaring neoclassical edifice, but also a building that commemorated one of the last century's great engineering feats—the construction of railroad tunnels into New York City. Now, in this gripping narrative, Jill Jonnes tells this fascinating story—a high-stakes drama that pitted the money and will of the nation's mightiest railroad against the corruption of Tammany Hall, the unruly forces of nature, and the machinations of labor agitators. In 1901, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Alexander Cassatt, determined that it was technically feasible to build a system of tunnels connecting Manhattan to New Jersey and Long Island. Confronted by payoff-hungry politicians, brutal underground working conditions, and disastrous blowouts and explosions, it would take him nearly a decade to make Penn Station and its tunnels a reality. Set against the bustling backdrop of Gilded Age New York, Conquering Gotham will enthrall fans of David McCullough's The Great Bridge and Ron Chernow's Titan.
Customer Reviews:
Great Glided-Age Gotham Tale.......2007-10-01
Much has been written about the lamentable loss of the original Penn Station in the 1960s. The majestic building's turn-of-the-century birth is less well known. Jill Jonnes tells this fascinating Gilded Age story in "Conquering Gotham."
The Pennsylvania Railroad, one of the most powerful corporations of the time, had long been thwarted in its efforts to enter the New York market, being forced to ferry its passengers across the North (Hudson) River. Andrew Cassett, the PRR's visionary President, was determined to finally overcome the technical challenges posed by the mile-long river crossing and the equally formidable obstacles of New York's graft-infested Tammany politics.
Fortune graced Cassett in the form of the election of the reform Mayor Seth Low in 1901. A dour, disagreeable man ("A politician can say `no' and win a friend," wrote journalist Lincoln Steffens. "Low can lose one by saying 'yes.'"), Low would serve only one term. But the two-year break in Tammany's City Hall stranglehold was window enough for Cassett to win approval for his plan without paying any "boodle." And an audacious plan it was: crossing the North River, burrowing under the City and then crossing the East River, in order to link the LIRR (PRR's subsidiary) directly to Manhattan.
Most observers expected PRR to erect bridges to achieve the river crossings. Instead, Cassett's engineers elected to construct subaqueous tunnels - two under the North River and four beneath the East River. Tunnel construction was a harrowing proposition; the East River tunnels, in particular, were marred by several fatal mishaps. Even after completion, PRR's engineers were not sure the tunnels were safe enough to withstand the stresses of high-speed trains.
Penn Station would be located in the heart of Manhattan's "Tenderloin" district, also known as "Satan's Circus," because of its rampant vice. Cassett's point man on the site assemblage was Douglas Robinson, brother-in-law to President Teddy Roosevelt, who set out to quietly buy up the bars, brothels, shops and tenement buildings on the cheap. However, PRR's intentions soon became public, and costs mounted. The hardest bargainer: the pastor of a Catholic church, who walked away with a half-million dollars and a more central location for his parish. Total cost for the assemblage: more than $5 million.
Turn-of-the-century train stations were cathedrals of commerce. And in this regard, Charles McKim's Penn Station - inspired by the ancient Roman Empire -- set a new standard. McKim's masterpiece would guilt the Vanderbilts into building a new, more palatial Grand Central Terminal, the one we still admire today.
McKim would not live to see the project finished. Neither would Cassett nor the LIRR's President William Baldwin (dead at 41). But the creation of these men and others - Penn Station and its tunnels - would transform Manhattan, sharply easing the dense overcrowding by making broadscale suburban commuting viable.
Fascinating History.......2007-07-02
If you love NYC history...then this is a book for you! The years of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century are illuminated in this carefulyy researched non-fiction account of an engineering marvel. Getting the Pennsylvania Railroad into the greatest city on earth, by tunneling under the Hudson reads like a dramatic novel, with an interesting cast of characters. It made me want to read more about the demise of Pennsylvania Station...so I found more books on that subject. Enjoy!!
A David McCullough treatment would have been gripping. This, not........2007-06-28
I came to this book prepared to place it in the pantheon of marvelous accounts of epic undertakings and events of the muscled, 19th century America powerbrokers whose vision shaped the world we live in. Unfortunately, Jonnes is not the writer to capture that age.
The majesty of the tunnel undertakings should have been the centerpiece of the story. The effort in the book clearly went into retracing the intrigues surroundinging the graft-ridden political machinery the PRR had to overcome. So, for visual support, we are treated to a number of head- and group shots of the principals, in and out of business meetings, and nostalgic scenes of congested New York streets and waterways. Where are the detailed descriptions, maps and diagrams that flesh out the real story - the mastery of tunnel construction in an unstable footing?
Jonnes has a long way to go to approach the narrative skills of David McCullough in "The Great Bridge," "The Johnstown Flood," or "The Path Between the Seas."
Needs a fact checker.......2007-06-15
I am an avid PRR aficiando but was shocked to read the first sentence of the book and to find it rife with errors. Mr. Cassatt used what the PRR called "Business Cars" for his travels over the railroad, not Pullman Palace Cars. He conducted his business and inspected his property from a seat in what the railroad termed a PARLOR not a sitting room. DETAILS!
I was so disappointed that I had to put the book down. I'll try again tonight. After all the hype about this book, I would have thought that the book would have been a historical gem telling the story of one of America's engineering marvels.
It is a story worth telling and telling well. I'll update my thoughts as I complete the story
Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic.......2007-06-14
Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its TunnelsA very good read about railroad history.
Book Description
Rare photographs recall interiors of late Victorian mansions belonging to William H. Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, U.S. Grant, and many others. New informative text.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful window . . ........2006-05-27
This book is a wonderful 'window' into a lifestyle long since gone. It's photographs show beautiful rooms that represent the craftsmanship that is almost nonexistent today. It is sad to know that many of the homes represented here have been demolished and replaces by greatly inferior buildings or even worse, parking lots and such!!
If you love the Victorian era, and want a peek into that era's homes, then you will truly enjoy this book.
INSIDE THE GILDED AGE.......2006-04-19
The interiors of these homes are just spectacular, the B&W period images are crisp and clean; impressive considering their age. It is a tragedy that so many of these rooms represented in these photos are gone along with the houses that possessed them. The craftsmanship of these rooms cannot be dublicated today and the estates are irreplaceable, at least a few where saved to give us an idea of how people really once lived and what an art true craftmanship was, but you can't help but be sickened at how easily they were demolished and the inferior buildings that replaced them...that are now themselves being replaced...sic transic gloria.
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