Urbanization and Class

In the compact city of the early republic class distinctions had been expressed by the way men and women dressed, how they behaved, and the deference they demanded from or granted to others. As the industrial city grew, these interpersonal marks of class began to lose their force. In the anonymity of a large city recognition and deference no longer served as mechanisms for conferring status. Instead people began to rely on external signs: conspicuous display of wealth, membership in exclusive clubs and organizations, and above all choice of neighborhood.

For the poor, place of residence depended, as it always had, on being close to their jobs. But for higher-income urbanites where to live became a matter of personal means and social preference. . . . [M]any of the very richest people preferred the heart of the city. Chicago boasted its Gold Cost; San Francisco, Nob Hill; Denver, Quality Hill; and Manhattan, Fifth Avenue. The New York novelist Edith Wharton recalled how the comfortable midcentury brownstones gave way to the “new millionaire houses,” which spread northward on Fifth Avenue along Central Park. Great mansions, emulating the aristocratic houses of Europe, lined Fifth Avenue at the turn of the century. . . .

New York City became the home of a national elite as the most ambitious gravitated to this preeminent capital of American financial and cultural life. Manhattan’s extraordinary vitality in turn kept the city’s high society fluid and relatively open. In Theodore Dreiser’s novel The Titan (1914) the tycoon Frank Cowperwood reassures his unhappy wife that if Chicago society will not accept them, “there are other cities. Money will arrange matters in New York—that I know. We can build a real place there, and go in on equal terms, if we have money enough.” New York thus came to be a magnet for millionaires. The city attracted them not only because of its importance as a financial center but for the opportunities it offered for display and social recognition.

This infusion of wealth shattered the older elite society of New York. Seeking to be assimilated into the upper class, the flood of moneyed newcomers simply overwhelmed it. There followed a curious process of reconstruction, a deliberate effort to define the rules of conduct and identify those who properly “belonged” in New York society.

The key figure was Ward McAllister, a southern-born lawyer who had made a quick fortune in gold-rush San Francisco and then devoted himself to a second career as the arbiter of New York society. In 1888 McAllister compiled the first Social Register, which announced that it would serve as a “record of society, comprising an accurate and careful list” of all those deemed eligible for New York society. McAllister instructed the socially ambitious on how to select guests, set a proper table, arrange a party, and launch a young lady into society. He presided over a round of assemblies, balls, and dinners that defined the boundaries of an elite society. At the apex stood “The Four Hundred”—the true cream of New York society. McAllister’s list corresponded to those invited to Mrs. William Astor’s gala ball of February 1, 1892.

Americans were adept at making money, remarked the journalist Edwin L. Godkin in 1896, but they lacked the aristocratic traditions of Europe for spending it. “Great wealth has not yet entered our manners,” Godkin remarked. In their struggle to find the rules and establish the manners, the moneyed elite made an indelible mark on urban life. If there was magnificence in the American city, that was mainly their handiwork. And if there was conspicuous waste and display, that too was their doing.

SOURCE: James Henretta, et al. America: A Concise History, 551-553