Beneath the Gold: Exploring Gilded Age Extremes

New York City has long been a place of extremes. During the Gilded Age (about 1870 to 1900), the contrast in the way the wealthy and the poor lived in New York was drastic... Photograph of William K. Vanderbilt’s home on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, where the lavish costume ball was held in 1883.In stark contrast to lavish balls and mansions of the city’s wealthiest citizens, photojournalist Jacob Riis captured the shocking living conditions of New York’s poverty-stricken population in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890). His photographs reveal...