Beginning in the 1880s and continuing up to the Great Depression of the 1930s, many American business leaders chose to reside in New York. Local families such as the Vanderbilts, Whitneys, and Astors built here, while others like the Carnegie, Frick, and Stewart families moved to the metropolis to better manage their fortunes.
While visiting Europe, many of them experienced the architectural pageantry and hierarchical social rituals enacted within the great houses of those cities. With fortunes large enough to erect and maintain houses of this caliber, many of America s wealthiest began to emulate this grandiose standard of living. The finest architects, McKim, Mead and White, Carrere and Hastings, Horace Trumbauer, and Delano and Aldrich, and art and antique dealers and decorators, Lord Joseph Duveen, William Baumgarten, Jules Allard, Lucien Alavoine, and White Allom, all vied for these important commissions.
Society and architecture historian Michael Kathrens well-researched book documents the architecture of these structures and the families who commissioned them. Over 40 of these splendid structures are illustrated with nearly 300 archival images, as well as floor plans, several newly commissioned and never before published.
Price: $56.95
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