At the close of the 19th century, newly rich Americans who hailed from beyond Washington, D.C. arrived in the city with overflowing bank accounts and determination to shine in elite society. This walking reveals how they came by their wealth and why they chose to set up shop in D.C.
Washington, D.C.’s Fifth Avenue
Fifth Avenue may have been where the nouveau riche set on conquering New York City society erected their lavish homes, but in D.C., ambitious parvenus bought up lots on Massachusetts Avenue, NW in today’s Dupont Circle neighborhood. See them on the walk!
Crazy, Rich Washington walking tour highlights
- Learn why D.C.’s Dupont Circle neighborhood became the city’s most fashionable in the 1880s.
- Discover why Gilded Age Washington had no need for an arbiter of social rules and style like New York’s Ward McAllister.
- Hear about D.C.’s Black Elite and how their influence on the nation’s capital endures.
- Get to know businessman Christian Heurich who represented an uncommon type of Gilded Age Washingtonian.
The walk will conclude at Anderson House, a Gilded Age mansion that is now home to the Society of the Cincinnati and open to the public for free tours.
Who invented the term “Gilded Age”?
Co-authors Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner coined the term when writing their 1873 novel set not in New York City, but in Washington, D.C. The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is “a biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America-an age of corruption when crooked land speculators, ruthless bankers, and dishonest politicians voraciously took advantage of the nation’s peacetime optimism.”
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