A Gilded Look at Manhattan

The Plaza – you may recall it from those childhood classics Eloise and Home Alone where the venerable hotel doubled as an elegant playground for youthful adventures – has been a New City landmark since it first opened its doors to high society and royalty of every incarnation on October 1, 1907. Construction of the 19-story building, embodying the pomp and opulence of a French château overlooking the expansive greenery of Central Park, and still today an icon of luxury and success, took two years to complete at an unprecedented cost of $12 million, a staggering sum in its day.

But that’s what my four day idyll in Manhattan was all about, a privileged peek into the lives of those who played with very high stakes to make it here. Some, like the Roosevelts, were born into families with money. Others, like the Irish factory worker, German dressmaker and Italian cleaning lady I met in a tenement at 97 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side and the ghosts of immigrants, hundreds of thousands of them, who whispered their hopes and dreams in the soaring halls of Ellis Island, did whatever it took to provide their families with a taste of what money could buy. Thanks to the Connecticut-based travel company, Tauck, which hosted me on this once-in-a-lifetime journey, I heard their stories and walked in their footsteps with the experts who knew them best, including award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose PBS films, The Brooklyn Bridge, The Roosevelts, The Central Park Five, Prohibition and the Statue of Liberty, proved fertile ground for my backstage pass to the lives responsible for the places I would explore; author Geoffrey Ward, who, along with his best selling written collaborations with Ken Burns, wrote a raw personal exposé about his own great grandfather, “the greatest swindler of the Gilded Age, whose villainy bankrupted Ulysses S. Grant and stunned the world of finance,” in A Disposition to be Rich; and Daniel Okrent, former public editor of the New York Times and prize winning author of many enlightening non-fiction books including Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, “that wove together the themes of money, politics, art, architecture, business, and society to tell the story of the buildings that came to dominate the heart of midtown Manhattan and with it, for a time, the heart of the world.”

I was here to enjoy an insider look at what Burns, Ward and Okrent wrote about through their eyes, an experience that opened mine to a time and places I had not been before. My first foray into history began with a guided walk through Central Park, something I had done countless times before. Little did I realize just how little I knew about this protected piece of urban parkland, some 843-acres of hiking trails, walking paths, lakes, gardens, waterfalls, and even a zoo and the 19th-century Belvedere Castle, all of it designed to represent a microcosm of the state of New York. I did not know that each of the 1,600 lamp posts that light the walkways of the park are marked with the closest street number and let you know whether

you are on the east or the west side so you won’t lose your way. Or that Shakespeare’s Garden was planted with hand-selected flowers that were mentioned in works by Shakespeare with one of them always in bloom and its Whispering Bench, acoustically blessed, invites you to send those sweet little nothings to your love at the other end of the bench with perfect clarity. Or that Sheep Meadow was named for the pedigree sheep that were let out twice a day on the great lawn where modern-day sunbathers flock and housed at Tavern on the Green at night through 1934, and that the roads and paths were deliberately curved to prevent horse and carriage races back in those early days when the likes of Roosevelts, the Carnegies, the Vanderbilts, the Astors and others were making names and legacies for themselves – and living large.

Mansions were all the rage in the early 1900s, built to be block-sized, bigger, better and more beautiful than their neighbors’ houses. I toured one, without crowds, when I was invited inside the Roosevelt’s twin-sided, open to one another, townhouse, #47 and #49 on East 65th Street, which Sara Delano Roosevelt had built for her son, Franklin, his new bride Eleanor – and herself. This is where I met Geoffrey Ward whose intimate knowledge about their lives made my first visit there come alive with renewed appreciation for Eleanor – her private years here were marked with her remarkable capacity for tolerance as her mother in law took over the running of both households and Eleanor’s children and her husband took up with his secretary. It was also here that Ward spoke about the Madoff-esque private lives of his own family, sharing details about his great grandfather’s schemes to bilk New York’s wealthiest, former President Ulysses S. Grant included, out of their vast fortunes and ruin his own family in the process.

Mark Twain was credited with coining the phrase, the Gilded Age, disguising it a contemporaneous criticism of the hidden inequality of the age where the rich wore diamonds and everyone else it seemed wore rags and “the chief end of man was – to get rich. In what way? dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must.” There was an especially ostentatious display of wealth in New York society then with evenings at the opera, theatre and gala balls and other lavish lifestyle amenities that were only available to the privileged few.

“ THE GILDED AGE OF NEW YORK WAS A FANCIFUL PLACE FOR THOSE WITH MEANS AND PEDIGREE BUT IMMIGRANTS FACED TOUGH TIMES THEN AS MANY DO NOW.”

That’s how I experienced places where New York City jet setters still play: Lincoln Center, where cocktails and casual conversations with Ken Burns himself made a private affair even more elite and educational; in a grand ballroom in the Plaza with a parade of white tailed waiters serving up gourmet fare exquisitely prepared for the finest champagne and caviar tastes while a concert pianist entertained; at Brooklyn’s stunning landmark River Café at the foot of the historic bridge in Dumbo, Michelin starred, flower filled, and inviting with riverfront views that took my breath away during a VIP lunch that took my will power away, most notably by the delicate hand sculpted dark chocolate Brooklyn Bridge that melted in my mouth; and aboard a privately chartered yacht, gleaming in polished brass and mahogany and traditionally dressed to reflect the sailing sensibilities of an earlier age of refinement and revelry, that ferried us across the river to Manhattan.

I went into the hallowed corridors of Grand Central Station with a historian well versed in the legends and lore of this venerable train depot, learning the back stories and bickering that went on behind the scenes as commuters rushed to and fro. I have waited under that clock in the middle of the station many times over the years, not realizing that it was worth many millions because of the four opal faces on the clock which are perfectly aligned with the four compass points of the building and hide a secret spiral stairway. Look up at the beautiful ceiling and you just might notice that the constellation is backward; get a closer look at the sculpted designs on the station’s walls and you’ll see lots of acorns, status symbols of the Vanderbilts who financed the construction of the original station in 1871; have a drink in a hidden apartment-style bar, authentically restored to showcase gilded age imbibing; peek in at Track 61 to see the remnants of the secret train platform used by an ailing FDR to go between the Waldorf Astoria and the station, and whisper your discoveries in the acoustical tunnel outside of the Oyster Bar before going in to sample their seafood!

I learned the ins and outs of Rockefeller Center too, a place that evokes nostalgic memories of Christmas trees and ice skating, from Daniel Okrent, whose knowledge of the buildings and their benefactors raised the bar in architectural and aristocratic insights, before I took in panoramic views of the city from the Top of the Rock. It was even more memorable for me having had the opportunity to meet Susan and David Rockefeller several times, even inside their New York City pied-a-terre where they live the high life, and interview them for a Venü cover story!

The Gilded Age of New York was a fanciful place for those with means and pedigree but Immigrants faced tough times then as many do now. I got a firsthand glimpse of their private lives too during a visit to the tenements down on Orchard Street. Behind the closed doors families of five, ten and often more lived in a cramped two-room apartment, chamber pots at the ready when the out houses were not accessible, as they eked out a life in the early 1900s among equally hard-pressed over crowded neighbors in buildings riddled with disease – and rats. The people who opened their doors to me were young role-playing actors who didn’t break rank, accent, time period or character as I posed as an inquisitive reporter who wanted to record their stories. The tenement building is now a must-see museum showcasing authentic replicas of actual apartments from different decades; each a telling visual set of the disparities between rich and poor, citizens and wannabes.

Roughly 40 percent of today’s American population had an ancestor walk through the immigration office at Ellis Island in New York City. Between the 1880s and the 1920s more than 12 million European immigrants came through Ellis Island, their pictures and names immortalized there still. I had never been to Ellis Island before this trip, and most definitely will not see it again the way Tauck showed it to me.

Picture arriving there by boat like so many first timers did before, except imagine a private ferry boat for your fellow travelers only, passing by a glowing Statue of Liberty on your way there, for an exclusive evening with no outsiders allowed. All lit up awaiting your arrival, Ellis Island is a sight to behold, but look closer and see a gauntlet of park officials flanking the walkway as you are personally welcomed ashore for time to view the exhibits and facilities at your leisure, followed by a gala cocktail reception with dinner, dancing and big band music, in halls once filled with the tired, the hungry, the poor.

Not exactly the welcome that millions of hopeful immigrants experienced, but one they may have envisioned nonetheless.¨

Written by Cindy Clarke