Women of Emanu-El: Gilded Age Tour

Join us for a walking tour with historian Bradley Shaw and walk through the Upper East Side from the Plaza Hotel on 59th Street to The Metropolitan Museum of Art on 82nd Street!

The so-called “Captains of Industry,” often called robber barons and including well-known figures like Vanderbilt, Astor, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan, held sway by taking advantage of the large immigrant workforce.

These tycoons flaunted their great wealth by lining the streets near Fifth Avenue and Central Park with their opulent mansions.The Gilded Age also featured prominent Jewish families such as the Adlers, Guggenheims, Pulitzers, Strauses, and Warburgs, who built grand homes on the Upper East Side and have notable connections to the era.

Many of those mansions (mostly along 5th Avenue) survived only until the 1930s, when apartment buildings replaced them, but some still stand in all their grandeur along with their history and stories. An optional lunch will follow.