Fans of the popular HBO series The Gilded Age, and readers of the book Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark & The Spending of a Great Fortune (by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.) are familiar with that era’s enormous wealth and the almost-imaginary characters who lived lavishly. In reality, the fortunes being made in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s were, even by today’s standards, enormous. Steel mills for the railroads crisscrossing the country, as well as oil which was needed to fuel all this industry, were driving the profits for these industrialists.
These people were also avid collectors, because keeping up with their neighbors was not just a listing in the social register, but a race for tangible acquisitions. And no, we are not talking about M&As like today’s wealthy do. They were, instead, the actual custodians of culture, acquiring, nurturing, and preserving art.
Some of the biggest names in the game back then were living the life in New York City, where J.P. Morgan (General Electric and U.S Steel), Henry Clay Frick (Carnegie Steel) and Archer Milton Huntington (railroad magnate) were forward thinking enough to preserve their accumulated treasures – rare books, illuminated manuscripts, paintings, furniture, objets d’art, books and silverware – and needed large residences where they could show off these acquisitions to guests and gloat about them as they roamed around their metropolitan residences.
In the 1890s in Manhattan, many of these newly rich families were inching up in society by the sheer extravagance of their lifestyles, traveling to European hot spots and spending their money on fine art and décor items for their palatial homes. Interior designers were having their own golden age, with a no-limit spending on fine art, antiques and other collectibles to decorate their clients’ city palaces.
Some of these mansions started to empty out (to be demolished to make space for swanky apartment skyscrapers) after family dynasties and relatives either died, ran into financial ruin, or left town. Others were turned into museums to honor a family’s legacy where their collections could be exhibited for us to learn from and enjoy. Here are three exemplary examples of legacy preservation in New York.
The Morgan Library & Museum
The Morgan Library & Museum is a fine example of one such family museum, honoring its founder, J.P. Morgan, and his penchant for antique Bibles, illuminated manuscripts and historical documents. Completed in 1906 as the private library of the banker J. P. Morgan, the institution has more than 350,000 objects. One of the most powerful bankers of his era, J.P. (John Pierpont) Morgan (1837-1913) financed railroads and helped organize U.S. Steel, General Electric and other major corporations as the J.P. Morgan & Company, the predecessor to today’s financial giant JPMorgan Chase.
As early as 1900, Mr. Morgan himself was looking to build a repository with easy access to his mansion at the corner of 36th Street and Madison Avenue. The Italian Renaissance palazzo building was designed by the starchitects of the era, McKim, Mead and White. In 1924, the Morgan family transformed it into a public institution which is celebrating its centennial this year. Many parts of the building are now used for small scale exhibitions, but the spectacular library remains intact and is magnificent.
The Frick Collection
Henry Clay Frick began building and operating coke ovens in 1870 in Pittsburgh where most of the country’s steel and iron factories were. Mr. Frick played a major role in the formation of US Steel Corporation in 1901 and, with his vast wealth, soon became its director, and a director of several railroads soon after, all the while living on Fifth Avenue in an enormous residence designed by Carrère and Hastings mansion (he moved in with his family in 1914).
Upon his death, Mr. Frick bequeathed $15M and his Fifth Avenue mansion to the city, establishing the Frick Collection where his treasures, bronzes, famous paintings have been on view since 1935. The Frick Collection is nearing the end of an extensive renovation and is considered one of the greatest privately owned museums of the world with masterpiece paintings from the Renaissance to early 20th century.
The Hispanic Society of America
A more academically inclined philanthropist, Archer Milton Huntington, came from a family with a vast fortune from his father-in-law’s railroad companies. Born in 1870 in New York City, as the only son of one of the wealthiest men in America, Collins Potter Huntington, builder of the Central Pacific Railroad and Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, Archer Huntington prided himself on concealing details of his private life and finances from the public eye and chose to devote his life to being an avid explorer, scholar and chronicler.
He used his money wisely to benefit the field of Hispanic studies, a topic that fascinated him. With land purchased in upper Manhattan and an initial endowment, in May 1904, he executed the Foundation Deed for a public Spanish library and museum to be called The Hispanic Society of America. Here, he could store and exhibit all his books, paintings and objets d’art he collected on trips to Spain and Latin America. He also made numerous contributions to the American Geographical Society.
For a glimpse into the lifestyles of the rich and famous, each of these museums offers a rare and untouched experience during the early years of the 20th century, while being refreshed along the way to improve accessibility and online presence. But a visit in person will be the most rewarding!
