Gilded Age

At the turn of the 20th century, French women of style were gilded peacocks festooned with jewels, gaudy things cinched so tightly at the waist that they could not breathe, teetering on claw feet. Then along came Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel (1882-1971), who favored hats without feathers, dresses without corsets, and shoes without heels. Her mobile clothes made women mobile. Coco Before Chanel , Anne Fontaine's elegant portrait of the couturier in the years before she officially opened shop, stars Audrey Tautou.

William Lukens Elkins' old summer estate in Cheltenham is a shell of its former self. Gone are the lavish furnishings that filled the oil-and-streetcar tycoon's great hall. The works of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters that covered his walls have been replaced by prints. And an aging chandelier now hangs precariously over his elaborate double staircase. The fact that the property remains intact at all - more than a century after Elkins' death - is something of a miracle, preservationists say. In 2009, a hastily formed nonprofit conservancy bought the Italian Renaissance palace and its surrounding 43 acres - just off Route 611 - for $8.5 million, saving it from those who would carve it up for residential development.

The rich and the famous have been building mansions and manor houses along the Hudson River for well over two centuries, and some of their names still echo up and down the valley: The writer Washington Irving. The artist Frederic Church. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. Financier Jay Gould. Frederick Vanderbilt, of the Vanderbilt line descended from business mogul Cornelius. Oil baron John D. Rockefeller and his progeny. Rockefeller. Now there's a name, almost as famous around the globe as it is here in Tarrytown, where the family mansion, Kykuit, remains firmly anchored in the woods just a few miles away.

Just as the movie Gosford Park was as much about the goings-on upstairs as it was about the happenings downstairs, there is a tour of one of Newport's grandest mansions that reveals the social history of a house - and its servants. No longer content to see how the exceedingly rich lived, now we want to learn how the lowly served them. Behind-The-Scenes at the Elms is a separate tour from the 10-house package organized by the Preservation Society of Newport County. Begun in 2000 after nearly four years of research, the tour is offered only four times a day. There is a separate fee ($15)

In those long-ago days when Gilded Age millionaires paid almost no income tax and the competition to build ornate mansions verged on a blood sport, Julian Francis Abele was among the busiest architects in America. The Philadelphian designed big estates on the Main Line, townhouses on New York's Fifth Avenue, pavilions in Newport, R.I., and temples to education around the country. But had Abele wished to visit one of his creations, he would have been required to enter through the servants' door, if he were allowed in at all. Although Abele's wealthy clients knew that he must have spent his days bent over a drafting table in the prestigious Broad Street office of Horace Trumbauer, most were unaware that in the evenings he went home to 15th and Christian Streets, then an enclave for Philadelphia's African American professionals.

They tell the story of the man who couldn't see the ocean from the windows of his home. He couldn't raise the ocean - so he lowered his backyard by 17 feet. Then there was the woman who wasn't invited to dinner, though her neighbors were. Her revenge was sweet. She bought the five surrounding houses, gave them to her friends, and was never left off the guest list again. Welcome to Newport, R. I., a port 90 miles south of Boston, near the mouth of Narragansett Bay, a historical summer retreat for the rich that now draws visitors all year.

Alfred S. Branam Jr., 47, of West Philadelphia, a former news writer at NBC-TV in New York and an architectural historian who spent decades studying the architecture and formal gardens of country estates built during the Gilded Age around the turn of the century, died Wednesday of a burst cerebral aneurysm at Misericordia Hospital. Architectural history "was his first love," said his mother, Ethel L. Branam. "He always wanted to preserve all the old buildings. Even on the job at NBC, his co-workers would tease him: 'As much as you love these buildings, if anybody ever deserved to live in a castle, it would be you.' " But he did not live in a castle - or one of the formidable estates built in Phliladelphia during the Gilded Age that he loved so much.

In his celebrated 1889 essay "Wealth," Andrew Carnegie admonished fellow grandees of the Gilded Age that "the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. " Carnegie devoutly believed that businessmen should repay their debt to society, applying their skills to philanthropic enterprise. He wanted active involvement, not just a fistful of checks. If necessary, Carnegie favored stiff inheritance taxes that would force the rich to disgorge their money to society rather than leave it to pampered heirs.

A hundred years after the Continental Army occupied the hills around Fort Washington in Montgomery County, several prominent Philadelphia families came together to encamp there for a longer stay. They were the Fells and the Drexels, new scions of the Gilded Age. In 1882, they brought their fabulous fortunes to Camp Hill, built several stone mansions along the sprawling ridge, and lay the foundation of a colorful, 70-year tenancy. Theirs is a story marked by privilege and intrigue and perhaps even murder, said Lew and Trudy Keen, who will present a multimedia program on Camp Hill Hall at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Clifton House in Fort Washington.

Renowned for its mansions, jazz festivals, the Naval War College, and its yachting regattas (it was home to the America's Cup races for more than 50 years), Newport is a city where the Old World and the New World meet in a graceful way. A port 90 miles south of Boston and about a five-hour drive up I-95 from Philadelphia, this historical summer retreat for the rich draws visitors, and mansion-gawkers, year-round. Newport's fine examples of 17th- and 18th-century colonial architecture stand in contrast to the lavish European palace-style mansions constructed during the Gilded Age from 1850 to 1920.

The fate of one of Philadelphia's last large Gilded Age estates is again in question, three years after a sale intended to secure its preservation. Last week, a bankruptcy judge restored ownership of the Elkins Estate - a 43-acre property off Route 611 in Cheltenham - to the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine de' Ricci, the religious order that sold it in 2009. The ruling comes after the property's most recent buyer - a nonprofit that turned the grounds into a reception hall and spiritual center - failed to make several payments on its $8.5 million sale price and filed for Chapter 11. "Ultimately, we don't want to retain ownership," said the congregation's president, Sister Anne Lythgoe.

Gov. Corbett cited "Pennsylvania's Gilded Age, a time of industrial might," with some nostalgia in his remarks Dec. 10 at the Pennsylvania Society's yearly steak dinner for lawmakers, lawyers, lobbyists, and business operatives in the fancy Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. It was an appropriate setting. Maybe too appropriate. The society holds its conclave in New York, as it has since 1899, amid the trappings of the original Gilded Age, when wealthy Pennsylvanians, and the state's finances, were relocating to the nation's metropolis.

I've heard several commentators refer to this as the "golden age" of NFL quarterbacking, or some hyperbolic variant of the same theme. I don't think they are watching the same games I am. To be sure, it doesn't get much better than Drew Brees' five-touchdown performance Sunday night. We are obviously witnessing two of the all-time greats in Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. Michael Vick can be spectacular, Ben Roethlisberger has some serious skins on the wall, and only a neck injury is keeping Peyton Manning from continuing to rewrite the record book.

William Lukens Elkins' old summer estate in Cheltenham is a shell of its former self. Gone are the lavish furnishings that filled the oil-and-streetcar tycoon's great hall. The works of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters that covered his walls have been replaced by prints. And an aging chandelier now hangs precariously over his elaborate double staircase. The fact that the property remains intact at all - more than a century after Elkins' death - is something of a miracle, preservationists say. In 2009, a hastily formed nonprofit conservancy bought the Italian Renaissance palace and its surrounding 43 acres - just off Route 611 - for $8.5 million, saving it from those who would carve it up for residential development.

At the turn of the 20th century, French women of style were gilded peacocks festooned with jewels, gaudy things cinched so tightly at the waist that they could not breathe, teetering on claw feet. Then along came Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel (1882-1971), who favored hats without feathers, dresses without corsets, and shoes without heels. Her mobile clothes made women mobile. Coco Before Chanel , Anne Fontaine's elegant portrait of the couturier in the years before she officially opened shop, stars Audrey Tautou.

Not many Final Four visitors will make the trip, but a ride along Michigan Avenue, from the city's western border to its downtown, is an eye-opening journey. The economically bombed-out area makes North Broad Street look like Rodeo Drive. It might best be described by the name of a bar that still sits there defiantly, a block west of the remains of Tiger Stadium: O'Blivion's. When Tiger Stadium opened in 1912, Detroit was a boomtown. The boom went bust long ago. Now a big chunk of the city, like the truncated stadium, is an empty shell redolent of the past and not much else.

A hundred years after the Continental Army occupied the hills around Fort Washington in Montgomery County, several prominent Philadelphia families came together to encamp there for a longer stay. They were the Fells and the Drexels, new scions of the Gilded Age. In 1882, they brought their fabulous fortunes to Camp Hill, built several stone mansions along the sprawling ridge, and lay the foundation of a colorful, 70-year tenancy. Theirs is a story marked by privilege and intrigue and perhaps even murder, said Lew and Trudy Keen, who will present a multimedia program on Camp Hill Hall at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Clifton House in Fort Washington.

They say the era of great Main Line mansions is gone forever, with once-great estates chopped up for stucco and vinyl McMansions. But rising right now in Gladwyne is a French palais with big ambitions, a 30,000-square-foot home of cut limestone and patterned brickwork, with carved oak interiors. Elsewhere, ancient-looking Georgians and English country manors carry shocking numbers on their date stones: not 1904, but 2004. These are real mansions, sturdy and opulent, without a trace of the "Mc" about them.

Ron Chernow writes vast, exquisite, doorstop histories of such Gilded Age moguls as J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and the Warburg family, each cascading over 800 pages or more. "I didn't want to be stereotyped, 'biographer of the tycoon' on my gravestone," says Chernow, who will read at the Philadelphia Free Library tomorrow. "So I sat down with the big three - that would be my wife, my editor and my agent - and asked, 'What can I do that can sustain what I've done and extend what I've done, but lead me in a new direction?

Just as the movie Gosford Park was as much about the goings-on upstairs as it was about the happenings downstairs, there is a tour of one of Newport's grandest mansions that reveals the social history of a house - and its servants. No longer content to see how the exceedingly rich lived, now we want to learn how the lowly served them. Behind-The-Scenes at the Elms is a separate tour from the 10-house package organized by the Preservation Society of Newport County. Begun in 2000 after nearly four years of research, the tour is offered only four times a day. There is a separate fee ($15)