Beauty and Power: The Embrace and Abandonment of Modern Design in America’s Gilded Age to be held at Eustis Estate

When: Wednesday, September 27, 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Where: Eustis Estate, 1424 Canton Avenue, Milton

In the early years of the Gilded Age (1865-1920), the very rich in America embraced modern design in all its eclectic diversity. “New” and “now” were buzzwords for the new millionaires and their houses. By the 1890s, however, the richest Americans began to reject modernism, imitating styles of the past far more literally than before. These newer, bigger, more luxurious houses incorporated the latest building technologies wrapped in an antique exterior. Anti-modernism in the late Gilded Age was a rejection of the idea that America was not a country of palaces and castles, and an embrace of a new kind of aristocracy.

Historic New England is pleased to welcome Ulysses Dietz, curator of decorative arts at the Newark Museum, for this lecture at our first Gilded Age property, the Eustis Estate. Dietz worked on the restoration and reinterpretation of the Newark Museum’s 1885 John and Jeannette Ballantine House, one of the few urban Gilded Age mansions open to the public.

The cost is $15 for Historic New England members and $25 for nonmembers.

Registration required. Please call 617-994-6600 or register online: http://shop.historicnewengland.org/EUS-LECTURE-1-10526/