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Wondering about the filming locations for The Gilded Age, the new HBO Original Drama series that premieres today? We’ve got you covered. The Gilded Age is a sumptuous period drama set predominantly in New York City, with filming locations all over the east coast. The Gilded Age was created, produced and written by Julian Fellowes, who created the smash British hit Downton Abbey, so you’ll recognize some similarities — the drama between “upstairs and downstairs” and plucky outsiders breaking into societies unwilling to change.
Both shows use real-life events as plot points — in Downton Abbey, the sinking of the Titanic sets off the drama. In The Gilded Age, which begins in 1882, a young woman living in Pennsylvania named Marian Brook (played by Louisa Jacobsen) discovers that her father has squandered off his wealth and her inheritance, and she is forced to move in with her wealthy aunts in New York City. Now part of a wealthy family of Dutch descendants named the Van Rhijns, she comes across events that happened in real life New York, such as the battle between new and old for a new opera house and the arrival of the Statue of Liberty’s arm and torch in Madison Square Park. There’s also a main plot point inspired somewhat by the real-life drama between Mrs. Astor and Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt.
While Downton Abbey had Highclere Castle as the main setting, The Gilded Age needed to recreate many mansions of the Gilded Age New York set, along with their summer “cottages” in Newport. Although a good number of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue mansions still stand, they are often intermixed with newer construction, so it is hard to recreate that world in New York City today. As such, the filming locations in The Gilded Age are a combination of real-life exteriors and interiors throughout New York State and in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as elaborate sets.
Large-scale period dramas are rarely filmed in the United States, with shows like The Alienist going all the way to Prague to recreate 19th century New York City. The Gilded Age’s executive producer David Crockett says, ““Whereas hundreds of years of history might be around every corner in most European cities, we had to put together a team to blanket New York City and other parts of the Northeast to find the pieces of the 1880s that both still existed and worked for our story. And for things we couldn’t find, we built them – like the full city block of 1880s 61st Street.”
The props were almost as big a feat as securing filming locations in The Gilded Age. Prop master Michael Jortner says, ” “We worked closely with Julian on certain things, such as composing articles for newspapers and deciding what table settings would be laid out. We went over all the scenes of food preparation with the directors to make sure they had the required level of food to keep everybody moving.” Meanwhile, one important prop came across the country, says Jortner: “The printing press in one scene came from a museum in California and we reassembled it on location to get it running. They also had a team to create the props needed: “We acquired a lot, but we also built from scratch. Some items we bought were in disrepair, so we used them as a reference point. The parasols and umbrellas were original, but we had to redo the canopies. All the copper cookware was re-coppered to make it look brand-new. We made all the police badges. Then we were repairing things as we went.”
To get you started on the The Gilded Age filming locations, below is a preview of some of the gorgeous places in the production. We’ll be adding more locations as the show continues, so stay tuned. The Gilded Age premieres on HBO tonight at 9 PM ET. You can learn more about New York City’s Gilded Age mansions on our Fifth Ave Gilded Age Mansions Tour!
Fifth Ave Gilded Age Mansions Tour
George and Bertha Russell, played by Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon, are the quintessential “New Money” New Yorkers. George, a ruthless businessman, has made a fortune in railroads and Mrs. Russell seeks to be accepted into New York society. They have just built an enormous mansion on 61st Street designed by the real-life architect Stanford White. It’s just across the street from the old money Van Rhijns as well as the entrance to Central Park. in the first episode, White says to Mrs. Russell, “I’m pleased with the size. It’s big enough to be splendid but not oppressive.” Mrs. Russell, responds “I agree. One needs to be able to breathe.” The clock in the lobby, White says, comes from the Hotel de Soubise, one of the hôtel de partculiers, in Paris’ Marais district.
Some of the interiors of the Russells’ mansion (such as the ballroom and the billiard room) were filmed in the grand rooms in The Breakers, the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. The entrance hall and sitting room of the mansion in The Gilded Age are so impressive you might be wondering which mansion it was filmed in, but it is actually a set (also built on the soundstage at the Museum of American Armor in Bethpage, Long Island (near the filming locations for Dickinson). Other interiors were created on soundstages at Broadway Stages in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The street itself was built in a backlot at the Museum of American Armor. The street sets look too pristine to be New York City (in our opinion)! They have a bit of a Disneyland feel in their perfection, something that the sets of Bridgerton also had. In real life, the northeast corner of 61st Street and Fifth Avenue is now an apartment building, across the street from the Pierre Hotel. On the same site previously was a large mansion designed by Richard Morris Hunt for lawyer Elbridge T. Gerry, which included a library for his 30,000 books.
The Van Rhijn townhouse forms a distinct contrast to the Neoclassical exterior and Rococo interior of the Russells’ mansion. The Van Rhijns prefer the architectural style of the old set, a classic townhouse layout with wood-based interiors that are not too flashy. The Van Rhijn aunts, Agnes and Ada (played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon), have been watching the Russells’ mansion rise up.
While some interiors of the old money set were filmed in real-life locations, the interior of the Van Rhijn townhouse is a set. Crockett says, “We treated the entire season like a giant movie. We crossboarded the entire season and shot all of the scenes for each house at one time. We built a backlot with giant sets. We had four different soundstages in two different locations.”
Central Park was built over the course of two decades, from 1857 to 1876. The Gilded Age has its characters taking walks, riding carriages and meeting people in the park. One of those meeting locations, Bethesda Fountain, was a real life filming location. It was shot on a sunny afternoon, with hundreds of period costumed extras filling the large terrace. The main action took place around the fountain.
Bethesda Terrace was designed by Calvert Vaux, one of the two main architects for Central Park, while the sculptures of the terrace and the fountain were designed by the mostly-forgotten architect Jacob Wrey Mould.
From 1876 to 1882, the arm and torch of the future Statue of Liberty was on display in Madison Square Park, as a fundraising effort for the pedestal of the statue. This location becomes a meeting spot for two characters in The Gilded Age. The filming location for this scene in The Gilded Age is not inside the real Madison Square Park, but at Washington Park in Troy, New York. Learn more about this event in an upcoming Untapped New York Insiders tour of the Secrets of Madison Square Park.
Before Madison Square Park, the torch was actually in Philadelphia for the World’s Fair (also known as the Centennial Exposition) in Fairmount Park from May 10 to November 10, 1876. For a $0.50 entry fee, fairgoers could climb to the balcony and the proceeds went to the funding of the statue. Bartholdi himself also came for the event. You can see Untapped New York founder Michelle Young speaking about the construction of the Statue of Liberty in the History Channel series The Engineering That Built the World.
The production team went looking for a streetscape that would resemble 1880s New York City. They found some of that in Troy, New York, a city outside of Albany. Crockett says, “Troy was a godsend. I had been there years earlier for The Age of Innocence. Troy was prosperous through the Civil War, but when the railroad came in and the canal was no longer the preferred method of transporting goods, it receded. But the buildings from the 1830s, ‘40s and ’50s are still there. We basically transformed a full city square and had five blocks fully dressed with horses, carriages and extras. It was pretty special.”
Troy, New York also served as the backdrop for scenes that take place in Brooklyn, involving a Black character named Peggy Ryan (played by Denée Benton) whom Marian befriends, as well as plot lines that take place outside of New York City like a trip to see the opening of a Red Cross Hospital.
Uptown and downtown is another big theme in The Gilded Age. The Russells move from downtown, where it is no longer fashionable, uptown to 61st Street.. Historically, this is where old and new money are building homes along Central Park. Same goes for the entertainment scene. Downtown becomes not only out of fashion, but a bit seedy. The opera house for the old New York money set is downtown, on Irving Place and 14th Street. None of the new money set can get boxes there, so they eventually decide to build a new opera house.
For the filming of the Academy of Music, the production team of The Gilded Age made use of Troy once again. The Troy Savings Bank Music Hall was designed by George B. Post (who once had many buildings in New York City, most of which have been demolished) and built between 1871 and 1875. It is a unique mixed-use building, designed from the start with banking halls on the bottom floors and the music hall on the upper floors. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989 and the music hall is run by a non-profit.
Mrs. Astor is a formidable force in The Gilded Age, as she was in real life. Even her right-hand man, Ward McCallister, appears in the show. In the 1880s, Mrs. Astor was still living downtown at 34th Street and 5th Avenue, in a townhouse she moved into in 1854 when she married William Backhouse Astor Sr. Following her husband’s death in 1875, she made some major renovations, updating the house into the Rococo style of the time. Her ballroom, which could fit 400 guests, is where the famous list of the “400” came from — the guests allowed by her gatekeeper Ward McCallister. Not until 1894, after her nephew demolished his own townhouse to build the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel next to Mrs. Astor’s house, would Mrs. Astor make the move uptown to 65th Street and Fifth Avenue, building a new mansion designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt (made popular by Alva Vanderbilt).
The interior of Mrs. Astor’s house in The Gilded Age is filmed at the Hudson River Museum, located in Yonkers, New York. The museum was formerly the Glenview estate, and the house was constructed between 1876 and 1877 for John Bond Trevor, a New York financier. In the 1920s, the estate and its grounds were sold to the City of Yonkers, which turned it into a park. The Hudson River Museum took it over in 1948.
A luncheon Marian attends with her aunt Ada, Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Fane, and Cornelius Eckhart at Mrs. Morris’ house is filmed in one of the rooms in Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York. Other rooms at Lyndhurst are also used for places in Mrs. Morris’ house, as well as a scene where an art auction takes place as a fundraiser for the Red Cross. As described by Emma Gencarelli, the Film, Photography, & Collections Coordinator at Lyndhurst, the shooting took place in 2019 over a period of five weeks and was the largest production to date filmed at the historic mansion.
The work to transform the mansion into the set included removing and storing all the existing furniture and protect the walls and floors of the historic house. As part of the production, the Gilded Age set design team actually fixed up some of the wear and tear that had occurred in the house before — an added perk for the museum! As Gencerelli writes for The National Trust for Historic Preservation, “It’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime and thrilling process to see Lyndhurst go from a museum to a living, breathing set for a historic period drama. What was once a static and frozen-in-time space becomes alive with the energy of people, clothing, and objects that so arduously reflect the very history that we as a museum strive to recollect for visitors.”
In the first episode, Larry Russell, back from Harvard, attends a party in Newport, Rhode Island at the home of someone from the old money crowd. There, he runs into one of the Astor daughters. It’s his first foray into the society in which his mother desperately wishes to gain entry. These scenes were filmed at The Ledges Hotel in Newport.
In episode eight, many of the characters, including the Russells, the Astors, Ward McAllister, and Aurora Fane go up to Newport for the season. The scenes filmed at the casino, where they play grass tennis, are filmed in the real life Newport Casino which served as the first location for the U.S. Open (it is now the International Tennis Hall of Fame).
Fifth Ave Gilded Age Mansions Tour
You can learn more about New York City’s Gilded Age mansions on our Fifth Ave Gilded Age Mansions Tour! Next, read about the Gilded Age 5th Avenue Mansions of Millionaire’s Row!
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