New York in the Gay Nineties with Author John Tauranac

The Cornwall Library is delighted to present an illustrated talk by John Tauranac, whose new nonfiction book, New York’s Scoundrels, Scalawags, and Scrappers, is about New York City in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the Gay Nineties. This was at the end of the Gilded Age, a term coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner to describe the period from roughly the end of the Civil War (1865) to the beginning of the Progressive Era in 1900. An era of rapid industrial growth, technological innovation, and wealth creation, there was also widespread corruption, economic inequality, and poor living conditions for a large underclass. “Gilded” suggests a thin layer of gold covering vast social problems.

Author John Tauranac is well known as a social and architectural historian. In this book he begins each chapter with a different building of the era, then uses the building as a stage for corresponding social history. As he recounts, the 1890s in New York were a time of great inequality accompanied by opportunity for those who did not play by the rules. These included “the managements of some businesses and some administrations of the municipality who… gamed the system to their advantage. They are New York’s scoundrels, scalawags, and scrappers.” The few who fought for truth and justice generally went down fighting. As writer Tony Hiss comments, “As these meticulously recaptured events unfold chapter by chapter, an uncanny resemblance between then and now emerges.”

Tauranac has been teaching New York’s architectural history for many years at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. He also lectures on the city, gives tours, and designs maps. His many books include The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark. He and his wife Jane Bevans, an artist and lawyer, live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and in Cornwall. They are both native New Yorkers.

Books will be available for purchase.

Registration is requested.