Thursday, February 27, 2025 – DIFFERENT SOCIAL CLASSES HAD DIFFERENT ENTERTAINMENTS

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PARTYING IN 

NEW YORK’S GILDED AGE


Thursday, February 27, 2025

ISSUE #1406

New York Almanack

Bill Greer

Partying in New York’s Gilded Age

February 26, 2025 by Bill Greer 

At Tony Pastor’s Opera House, one of the more respectable establishments on The Bowery in 1872, the impresario sang of the gulf separating the city’s Upper Ten Thousand and Lower Ten Thousand. But whether blue-blood on Fifth Avenue or down-and-out in Five Points, everyone in New York City could enjoy a good party.

The Patriarchs, twenty-five gentlemen possessing the snootiest of names and the moldiest of money, held their inaugural ball in mid-winter. Under rules established by the event’s planners, Ward McAllister (1827 – 1895) and Caroline Astor (1830-1908), each was entitled to invite five men and four ladies.

To thwart a patriarch introducing an unworthy guest to the assemblage, his associates threatened to publicly upbraid him for the offense. Heaven forbid that a Astor or Van Rensselaer rub elbows with a nouveau riche like Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The anointed gathered for dinner around an immense oval table. Flowers and fountains covered it in such exquisite arrangement that neither petal nor spray hindered the beautiful from gazing upon one another. The quadrilles and waltzes lasted until dawn, when another magnificent repast fortified the guests for their journey home.

Not to be outdone, the aristocracy of the Fourth Ward assembled at a rat-pit turned saloon for the Beggars’ Banquet, according to The New York Times.

The blind, the crippled, and the maimed packed tables like sardines to celebrate their decidedly artistic profession. Bringing appetites as great as the Bohemian whose dinner hour was always “one o’clock tomorrow,” they feasted on beefsteak and onions.

The ancient patriarch among them went by “Cully the Codger.” He refused to unwrap the yards of woolen scarf round his throat. “They’d be sure to steal ‘em,” he said, eying his sticky-fingered neighbors.

Awash in whiskey, a fellow named Burkey climbed atop a chair busting to make a speech. He swore he’d visit Boss Tweed in Sing Sing and cared no more for the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher than his grandmother’s aunt’s cat’s tail did. He’d refused a toddy from financier Jim Fisk because he never drank beneath himself.

Dublin Mag usurped his chair to declare that “as long as a woman’s a woman she ought to have a woman’s rights.”  While Mag gave a hoot about voting, she claimed her right to drink whatever she pleased.

After hours more oratory, song, and liberal doses of liquor and tobacco, the beggars went straight home to bed. Not a bit of trouble, said the copper on the beat. The great middle whose blood was too impure for the Patriarchs and bodies too washed for the beggars attended the annual bacchanal of the French Ball.

Thousands of the best men and the worst women filled the Academy of Music, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly proclaimed. Things were not quite that simple. Many married couples joined the masquerade, though frequently not with each other.

For this year’s event, gentlemen commonly disguised their identities as French musketeers, Italian revolutionaries, and Brother Devil. Another’s getup as Aladdin in black velvet and orange satin displayed more imagination, though disappointingly his genie did not emerge from the lamp. The hooded cape known as the domino was de rigueur for a woman.

Its built-in mask might hide her lovely eyes but she should shield no other features beneath anything but tights – black, red, blue or most daringly flesh – or was that bare skin showing on a goodly number of ladies?

Masquerade notwithstanding, the Sunday Mercury named dozens of revelers. Businessmen and politicos who might generally exercise their peccadillos discreetly need fear no embarrassment here. The evening benefited charity. The madams with whom they cavorted could ask for no better advertising.

Fanny Turnbull, who presided over a first-class establishment on Twelfth Street, appeared as Diana, Goddess of the Chase. Kate Wood operated the most exclusive bordello on the most exclusive block, West Twenty-fifth known for its Seven Sisters in the trade. Wood, whose gallery of paintings alone cost $10,000, wore a blue domino befitting a vestal virgin.

At ten, the band struck up a quadrille. At midnight, the tempo turned into a gallop. Gus Thompson banged Jennie Mitch into the buxom Eva King. All went down. Eva shook her striped domino with a frown that said “I’d like to put a head on you.”

Poor May Sherwood guzzled wine provided by her good-natured Charley, while Jo Thompson and Cora Lee of the house on Thirty-First Street hustled around like a pair of lovers.

At one o’clock, eyes turned upward to the boxes. A sweet creature leaned far over the velvet rail clapping her jeweled hands. She revealed so many of her charms that whistles and cat-calls demanded an encore.  Hours later Dashing Angola, in a short tunic of purple satin and flesh colored tights, led the Can-Can, joined by Scotch lassie Katie and lank and limber Amelia.

With lights out at 5 am, the Sunday Mercury noted this year’s ball missed only the jolly face of the recently deceased Jim Fisk and the seductive curves of his flame Josie Mansfield.

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Illustrations, from above: The parlor at the Salmagundi Club’s Fifth Avenue brownstone; “The French Ball,” a later Patriarch’s Ball illustrated in George W. Walling’s Recollections of a New York Chief of Police (1887); Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II, nee Alice Claypoole Gwynne, in costume, 1883 (Museum of the City of New York); Ward McAllister caricatured as “Snobbish Society Schoolmaster” in Judge magazine, November 1890.

All image are copyrighted (c) Roosevelt Island Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
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