Edwardian Promenade

It’s no secret that I find the “cottages” of Gilded Age Newport absolutely fascinating. While I have yet to visit the “Queen of Summer Resorts,” Kathrens brings a glimpse of this summer colony in his recent release, Newport Villas: The Revival Styles, 1885-1935. Between that fifty year period dozens of mansions and villas were [...]

The typical Edwardian woman wished to see her name printed in the newspapers but thrice in her lifetime: at birth, at marriage, and at death. Fortunately for the press-hungry, a woman’s wedding was cause for pages and pages of articles devoted to announcements, details of the ceremony, and advice for the blushing bride. No [...]

The history of Greek letter societies in America begins on December 5, 1776, with the founding of The Phi Beta Kappa Society at the College of William and Mary. Its name deriving from the initials of a secret Greek motto, Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs = “Love of learning [is] the guide of life”, the fraternity was [...]

New York City at the turn of the century was a time of transformation. From a sleepy collection of boroughs along the Hudson to a bustling, frenetic city of millions, New York was a city on the verge of tremendous changes. Not surprisingly, many of them were created to meet the needs of the [...]

Between the years 1870 and 1914, hundreds of American heiresses flooded the shores of Britain and Continental Europe. To this day, their influence (and lineage) can be traced through many noble European households, and even some royal ones (Princess Diana was descended from New York heiress Frances Work, and the mediatized House of Croÿ is [...]

In a manner, the dandy was the male counterpart of the professional beauty: he had no other occupation than to devote himself to being clever, witty, well-dressed and amusing. Much like the Regency dandy, the Edwardian version flourished in an era where birth and breeding were no longer indicative of entrance into exclusive circles of [...]

The minuet–among other dances–reigned supreme as the courtliest, most aristocratic dance through the Renaissance to the Georgian era. It was stately, it was elegant, it was–most importantly–proper; only the hands of the dance partners touched, their fingers clasped ever so gently. Until a new dance emerged from those frivolous Viennese; with the waltz came [...]