Top 20 Things The Gilded Age Gets Factually Right & Wrong

#20: Teddy Bear

Wrong

In the Season 2 premiere, Peggy Scott finally uncovers the truth about her son, Thomas. He was not stillborn, as her father Arthur had claimed, but was secretly given up for adoption. Tragically, Thomas succumbed to scarlet fever, as did his adoptive mother, who contracted the illness from him. After visiting his grave, Peggy goes to the home where he lived and looks through his room. There, she finds his favorite toy, a stuffed bear, which his adoptive father allows her to keep. Its a deeply emotional moment, but it raises a small historical quibble. Since the show is set in the early 1880s, Thomas wouldnt have had a teddy bear, as they werent invented until 1902 and only became widely available the following year.

#19: The Squeaky Clean New York Streets

Wrong

The Gilded Age gets many things right when it comes to the architecture and costumes of the 1880s. However, it glosses over one major aspect of life in that era: the pervasive filth. In truth, New York City at the time was disgusting. The streets were littered with trash and horse manure, and the gutters brimmed with sewage. This was true even for high-brow areas. As a result, it was commonplace for people to spit openly, even inside their carriages. Yet, the series presents a version of the city so pristine, one might be tempted to eat off the sidewalks. It also omits the heavy air pollution that came with rapid industrialization, from factory smoke to the coal and wood heating used in most homes.

#18: The Steel Workers Strike

Right

In the second season, George Russell heads to Pittsburgh to deal with a potential strike at his steel mill. After protracted talks with labor leaders fail, he attempts to remove the striking workers to make way for scabs. This leads to a tense moment where George considers the use of violence, but ultimately relents. This storyline draws inspiration from the infamous Homestead strike of 1892, which unfolded just outside Pittsburgh. In the show, George faces off against the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, the same union involved in the historic event. Like George, Andrew Carnegie, the industrial titan at the center of the real-life conflict, was perceived as having pro-labor sympathies. That is, until the historical strike turned violent.

#17: Divorced Women Being Ostracized

Right

For the first two seasons of The Gilded Age, Aurora Fane remains a peripheral character. However, she is thrust into the narrative spotlight in the Season 3 premiere when her husband, Charles, admits to having an affair and asks for a divorce. Aurora initially refuses, but she ultimately agrees to dissolve the marriage. Despite being the one scorned, it is Aurora who bears the consequences, as she is ostracized by New York high society. This dramatic turn is not without historical precedent. While divorce is common today, it was rare at the time, and often amounted to social assassination for women. Also, as Aurora points out to Agnes and Ada in the season premiere, Newport was indeed a haven for wealthy divorcees back then.

#16: Ward McAllister's Downfall

Right

History has a way of repeating itself. Decades before Truman Capote was cast out of New York high society for airing the dirty linen of his swans in La Côte Basque 1965, the exact same thing happened to Ward McAllister. Portrayed in the show by Nathan Lane, McAllister was a trusted confidant of Mrs. Astor and self-appointed gatekeeper of elite society. However, just as dramatized in the penultimate episode of Season 3, his social reign crumbled in 1890, when he published the tell-all book, Society as I Have Found It, detailing the private affairs of his high society friends. This resulted in his social expulsion, a charge led by none other than Mrs. Astor. McAllister would die five years later while dining alone at New Yorks Union Club.

#15: Mrs. Fishs Parties

Wrong

During the actual Gilded Age, it was said that if Mrs. Fish invited you to a party, you went. No questions asked. In Season 1, Gladys and Larry Russell attend one of such parties, where Gladys bonds with Carrie Astor. However, for as strange as this party is depicted, its far tamer than the real-life spectacles Mamie Fish was known for. On one occasion, she promised an appearance by the mysterious Prince del Drago of Corsica, only for guests to discover that the supposed prince was just a monkey in a suit. Outlandish though they were, these extravagant parties were the talk of the town, and only intensified the desire of the nouveau riche to gain entry into the world of old money.

#14: Peggy's Narrow Escape in Alabama

Right

The second season sees Peggy journey to the American South for the first time to cover a story at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. While there, she and her editor, T. Thomas Fortune, have a heated encounter with two White men at a restaurant. The incident forces them to flee the town in a wagon and hide in a barn to avoid being lynched. For Peggy, it is a harrowing introduction to the brutal realities of Southern racism, a daily threat many Black people faced at the time. Her character is partly inspired by Ida B. Wells, the trailblazing journalist whose searing exposés on lynching garnered international attention. According to Julian Fellowes, Peggys experience in Alabama will motivate her to use her writing as a tool of activism, much like Wells did.

#13: The Woman Behind the Brooklyn Bridge

Right

While George Russell heads to Pennsylvania, he entrusts Larry with representing him at a meeting regarding the Brooklyn Bridge project. At the meeting, Larry is surprised to learn that the project is being overseen not by the chief engineer, Washington Roebling, but by his wife, Emily. This is historically accurate. The Brooklyn Bridge was initially conceived by John A. Roebling, who suffered a devastating injury before construction began and died shortly after. His son, Washington, assumed the role of chief engineer, but became bedridden in 1872 due to decompression disease. Over the next 11 years, Emily Roebling, an engineer herself, took over his responsibilities and supervised construction until the bridge was completed in 1883. When it finally opened, she became the first person to cross it by carriage.

#12: The Temperance Movement

Wrong

Season 3 begins with major changes in the van Rhijn household. Agnes van Rhijn has lost control of the home after falling into financial ruin and being rescued by her sister, Ada, who inherited a fortune from her late husband. With her newfound wealth and control, Ada decides to pursue a cause she holds dear: the Temperance Movement. She joins the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, but her involvement is frequently ridiculed, not only by Agnes, but also by her typically supportive niece, Marian. Although the show correctly highlights the rise of the Temperance Movement during the Gilded Age, it mishandles the reactions of the characters. In reality, the movement held broad appeal among women, many of whom suffered domestic violence fueled by their husbands drinking.

#11: Gladys Marriage to the Duke

Right

Its hardly a secret that the Russells are modeled after the illustrious Vanderbilt family, and in its third season, The Gilded Age leaned further into that historical parallel. The season begins with Gladys Russell and Billy Carlton becoming secretly engaged. However, their plans are swiftly derailed by Bertha, who has already arranged a marriage between Gladys and the Duke of Buckingham. Berthas scheme is eventually realized in the fourth episode, when a tearful Gladys reluctantly marries the Duke. This plot is lifted almost directly from the life of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the daughter of railroad tycoon William Vanderbilt and his wife Alva. Like Gladys, Consuelo was forbidden from marrying her true love and forced to wed the Duke of Marlborough. Both reluctant brides arrived late to their weddings, with tears in their eyes.

#10: The Real-Life Figures

Right

While The Gilded Age is a historical drama, most of the lead characters in its first season are largely fictional. However, the show still grounds its storytelling in authenticity by including a number of real-life socialites and does its best to remain faithful to their actual lives. Characters like Mrs. Astor, Ward McAllister and Mamie Fish were historical figures who dominated the upper echelons of New York society and initially turned their noses up at new money families. The show also includes T. Thomas Fortune, the highly influential editor of the New York Globe where Peggy Scott is hired to write, and Clara Barton, who was the founder of the American Red Cross, among others.

#9: The Black Press

Right

One of the shows lead characters, Peggy Scott, is a promising African-American writer who dreams of becoming a published author. Peggy submits her stories to The Christian Advocate but turns down their offer after she is asked to conceal her race and also change that of her story's protagonist. This leads to Peggy taking up a writing job with the Black newspaper, the New York Globe, which was helmed by the great T. Thomas Fortune. The Gilded Age sets itself apart from other period dramas by accurately representing prominent Black families of that era. It also highlights how important the New York Globe was for Black writers whose voices had largely been silenced due to racism.

#8: Agnes van Rhijns Employment of Peggy Scott

Wrong

When we first meet Peggy Scott, she offers a helping hand to Marian Brook, lending her the train fare after her purse is stolen and the two strike up a friendship. In return, Marian persuades her aunts to let Peggy stay with them because of the weather and, after discovering her excellent penmanship skills, Agnes offers Peggy a job as her secretary. Now while friendships between black and white women were not necessarily rare at the time, it wouldve been highly unlikely for a woman of Agnes van Rhijns status to hire a black woman as her secretary. Even the show's historical consultant, Professor Erica Dunbar noted, in a Vanity Fair interview, that its an atypical offer and would most likely never have happened.

#7: The Statue of Libertys Hand

Right

In the third episode of the show, Marian is invited to see the Statue of Libertys hand at Madison Square Park by her late fathers lawyer, Tom Raikes, who has his sights set on marrying her. She arrives at the park with Peggy and both women are taken aback by the sheer size of the sculpture, which Tom notes as being displayed in New York to raise funds for the statues pedestal. Although the sculpture only serves as a backdrop in Marian and Toms courtship, its presence is historically accurate, as the real Statue of Libertys hand and torch called Madison Square Park its home from 1876 to 1882, the latter year being when The Gilded Age begins.

#6: Thomas Edison Lights Up New York City

Right

In his retelling of the societal tussle between Old and New Money families in 1880s New York, Julian Fellowes expertly weaves real historical events into his fictional world. One of such events was Thomas Edison lighting up the New York Times building on September 4th 1882. Although Fellowes pretty much errs on the side of accuracy, he takes some creative license with it, by pushing the event from 3pm in real life to when its much darker out on the show, for a more dramatic effect. Also, while the show has Edison flip the switch in front of the New York Times building, in real life, the famed inventor turns it on at his Pearl Street Station, which then illuminates the news organization.

#5: Segregation & Racial Animosity in the North

Right

Going into the writing process for The Gilded Age, series creator Julian Fellowes intended to make a distinctively American show that was truly reflective of the 1880s clime. To achieve this, he sought to include multiple well-rounded Black characters and an accurate portrayal of their experience in a post-Civil War New York. While a lot of the atrocious crimes associated with segregation and racism frequently occurred in the South, there was still palpable animosity towards Black people in the North. These racial tensions are mostly depicted through the eyes of Peggy Scott, who has to deal with racism from newspaper editors, carriage drivers and even from the white servants at the van Rhijn household.

#4: Rapid Economic Growth & Influx of Immigrants

Right

The historical era from 1870 to 1900, referred to as the Gilded Age, was a period of rapid industrialization that brought with it the fastest economic growth rate in U.S. history. This caused an unprecedented increase in wages that pulled in millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia. The most prominent sector in this period was the railroad industry, which fetched its proprietors - men like George Russell - so much wealth and made them highly influential figures at the time. But as prosperous as this period was for the likes of the Astors and the Russells, it was the exact opposite for the poor, creating significant wealth disparity that is portrayed on the show through its upstairs-downstairs dynamic.

#3: Downstairs Happenings

Wrong

In typical Julian Fellowes fashion, The Gilded Age features a glaring class demarcation, depicting the upstairs lives of affluent New York socialites and the downstairs routines of their domestic servants. For the real-life servants, maintaining the extravagant houses and lifestyles of their socialite employers was a tremendous amount of work that took a significant physical toll on them. As this period came before the advent of electrical appliances, most housework, such as laundry in hot water and cooking large quantities of food, was done manually and posed the threat of extreme fatigue and serious injury. Virtually none of this toiling is portrayed on the HBO show, with the servants spending most of their time just discussing the lives of their upper-class masters.

#2: A Thriving Black Elite

Right

One thing The Gilded Age does right is its representation of a thriving community of Black entrepreneurs and their businesses. Set less than two decades after slavery was abolished, the show features a Black elite on a very similar path to wealth creation as the other wealthy white characters. It presents an often overlooked story of freedom and prosperity that Black aristocrats used in fortifying the arsenal that shielded them from the blistering racial discrimination of that era. Not only does the cast of characters include real-life figures like T. Thomas Fortune, it features fictional characters inspired by real people such as Peggy Scotts father, Arthur, who is based on Philip Augustus White, a successful pharmacist in New York.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.

Immigrants Arriving at Ellis Island - Wrong

The Show Is Set In the 1880s, but Ellis Island Didnt Receive Immigrants Until 1892

Use of Salt Shakers - Wrong

Bertha Russell Uses a Salt Shaker, but Those Were Not Common Until the 1910s

Antonín Dvoáks Presence in New York - Wrong

Dvoák Didnt Come to New York Until 1892, so He Couldnt Have Played in the 1880s

The Architectural Prowess of Stanford White - Right

The Notable Architect Designed Extravagant New York Mansions for Wealthy Families

The Opera House - Right

Just Like in Real Life, the Old Money Families Were Vehemently Against the Opening of the Metropolitan Opera House

#1: Old Money vs. New Money

Right

The major storyline of The Gilded Age deals with the conflict between the old money van Rhijn-Brook family, and the new money Russell family who live across the street from them. While this living situation wouldve been highly unlikely, their conflict is still rooted in authenticity, as instead of the British royal titles, Americans rose to influence on the strength of their bank accounts. However, even among the rich, the old money fixtures with Dutch heritage, who made their name through real estate and fur trading, acted as social gatekeepers against the new railroad millionaires. This conflict, both on the show and in real life, raises important questions of human nature and our reluctance to acknowledge the inevitability of change.

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