(Re)constructing the Gilded Age: The Cornelius Vanderbilt II Ballroom, with Laura Jenkins
HIG member and The Courtauld Institute of Art Ph.D. Candidate Laura Jenkins will give a talk as part of the SAHGB – IHR seminar titled “(Re)constructing the Gilded Age: The Cornelius Vanderbilt II Ballroom.” This will be a hybrid event, taking place online and in person at the Institute of Historical Research, Pollard N301 (3rd Floor, North Block of Senate House, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU) on Thursday, 21 March 2024, from 18:30 to 19:30. For more information and to register, use the following link: https://www.sahgb.org.uk/whatson/laura-jenkins-re-constructing
ABSTRACT
Between 1892 and 1894, the Paris decorator Gilbert Cuel created one of the most iconic rooms of New York’s Gilded Age in the ballroom of the Cornelius Vanderbilt II residence at 1 West 57th Street. The interior was based on the Galerie Dorée of the Hôtel de Toulouse (Banque de France), decorated by Robert de Cotte and François-Antoine Vassé in 1713–17 and renovated by Charles-Auguste Questel and others in 1865–75. In 1926, less than forty years after its completion, the ballroom was disassembled, and its architectural fragments were dispersed. Reuniting some of these fragments for the first time, this talk will consider the Vanderbilt ballroom as a case study in reconstruction – from the perspective of both historicist decoration, or ‘period’ style, and historical research. Focusing on carved wood panels (boiseries), which have conventionally fallen between the scholarly categories of architecture and furniture, it will demonstrate the care taken to adapt 18th-century materials to 19th-century uses and highlight the difficulty of salvaging interior stories from the débris of architectural demolition.