Skip to main content
Spring 2023 Lecture Series

The Gilded Age Years: Transforming America

Change can be exciting. It can also be unsettling. During the Gilded Age, change was happening at a pace unmatched in American history.

Buy Tickets

Plan your visit

The Breakers 44 Ochre Point Ave
Newport, RI 02840
April 13 – June 15, 2023 6:00pm – 7:00pm
  • Tickets on sale March 1
  • Live at the Great Hall of The Breakers and via Zoom video conference
  • Reception to follow
Ticket Type Price
Single Program Purchase: in-person $20
Single Program Purchase: in-person, Members $15
Zoom: Single Program $10
Zoom: all 6 lectures $50

Americans went from horse-drawn to motor-driven, oil lamplight to electric light, farmwork to factory labor, handmade to assembly line-produced, all in a few tumultuous decades. Mass communications, easy long-distance travel, leisure time and recorded entertainment reached millions for the first time.

Besides familiar names like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Edison and Hunt, how much do you know about this period that transformed America? Or rather, how much don’t you know? Find out by taking a deep dive with the Preservation Society’s series “The Gilded Age Years: Transforming America.”

In this six-part series at The Breakers – a place that epitomizes the Gilded Age – we will journey through an era that gave shape to the country we know today. Our distinguished guest speakers will illuminate the period between the Civil War and the dawn of the 20th century, examining the people, events and inventions that forever shaped our nation’s cultural fabric.

Lectures

Lecture1_Capital-Labor-Cartoon(TR2)
Lecture  at  The Breakers

The Gilded Age: Past and Present

April 13, 2023 6:00pm – 7:00pm

Tickets from $10 to $50

Are we living in a second Gilded Age? The transformative years of the late 19th and early 20th centuries left a lasting legacy for our world today. Speaker: Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane

Buy Tickets
Lecture2_Standard-Home-Phonograph_T.A.-Edison,-c.-1900
Lecture  at  The Breakers

The Gilded Years: The First Information Age

April 20, 2023 6:00pm – 7:00pm

Tickets from $10 to $50

Technologies like the telegraph, phonograph, photography and even the sewing machine revolutionized communication, connecting and shrinking the world. Speaker: Matthew Bird

Buy Tickets
Lecture3_Marthas-Vineyard
Lecture  at  The Breakers

The Many Playgrounds of an Industrial Age

May 4, 2023 6:00pm – 7:00pm

Tickets from $10 to $20

Visit the heyday of Northeastern vacation spots from the Adirondacks to Coney Island, from Martha’s Vineyard to the Catskills, and from Saratoga to Newport. Speaker: Will B. Mackintosh

Buy Tickets
roosevelt
Lecture  at  The Breakers

Age of the Machine: The Fight to Reinvent Democracy in the Gilded Age

May 18, 2023 6:00pm – 7:00pm

Tickets from $10 to $20

The Gilded Age is notorious as a time of rampant political corruption. It was also a time when reformers ignited a reinvention of American democracy. Speaker: T.J. Stiles

Buy Tickets
Lecture5_Chateau-sur-mer
Lecture  at  The Breakers

Creating a New American Image: Architecture, 1870-1910

June 1, 2023 6:00pm – 7:00pm

Tickets from $10 to $20

The first tall commercial buildings and the grandest of mansions are icons of the Gilded Age, but they were not the only architectural changes taking place. Speaker: Richard Guy Wilson

Buy Tickets
Lecture6_Mulberry-Street-c1900_--Detroit-Publishing-Company_LibCongress_-LC-USZC4-1584u(TR2)
Lecture  at  The Breakers

Under the Gold-Plating: Everyday Americans in the Gilded Age

June 15, 2023 6:00pm – 7:00pm

Tickets from $10 to $20

Who were the everyday people in this period of industrialization and urbanization? What were their struggles and triumphs? Speaker: Nancy C. Unger

Buy Tickets

More Tours, Events & Exhibitions

Get the Newport Mansions app

Download our tour app before your visit and bring your earbuds.

Additional Visitor Info

Partners in Preservation

BartlettLogo_white BNP-white