NYC Gilded Age

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet,

To smooth the ice, or add another hue

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess",

told by Salisbury to Pembroke in Shakespeare's "King John".

The gilded age may have had its roots in Shakespeare. It definitely had it in Mark Twain's "The Gilded Age". It was a period in the United States whereby the rich built massive mansions and showered their homes with the finest furnishings, art, tapestries and so much more. Opulence was the norm during this period for the Morgan’s, the Vanderbilt’s, the Astor's and the Frick’s.

There are two museums where you can get a taste of this period in New York. One is the NYC Museum on 103rd Street. They have a permanent collection of New York's gilded age. You get to see the crystal goblets, silver platers, oil paintings and much more.

Further down Fifth Avenue, you can visit the Frick Collection. Here one sees a man's passion for collecting beautiful art work, images and the desire for art. The mansion is the length of a block and is stately. It has a beautiful interior garden, a peaceful garden, where one can relax and meditate. There are pillars all around and sculptures of great artists surrounding it.

Henry Frick collected many European masterpieces, French furniture and murals by very famous artists. El Greco’s painting of St. Jerome looms over a room and Botticini’s “The Resurrection” is spellbinding. There are so many superb art work that one is mesmerized with all the fine art.

In 1935 the heirs donated this mansion to the city of New York as a museum. The beauty of this museum is that one can take their time to get a close up view of great art. You can spend hours viewing incredible art and it isn't extremely crowded. A jewel of a museum a couple of blocks away from the Museum Mile.

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