Episode 3, “Face the Music”

The rooms interpreted as George Peabody Wetmore’s (1846-1921) childhood bedroom suite at Chateau-sur-Mer are featured as Oscar Van Rhijn’s New York apartment. Wetmore was the son of William Shepard Wetmore, who built Chateau-sur-Mer, and he became a Rhode Island governor and U.S. senator.

Mr. Russell’s office at the Fifth Avenue house appears to be inspired by George Wetmore’s library at Chateau-sur-Mer.

The suppression of Black Americans was common among most markets and businesses in the North, as Peggy Scott encounters, as success was still dependent on the consumers of the South — very typical in the manufacturing and media markets.

The Red Cross fundraising activity has a precedent with Alice Vanderbilt at The Breakers. New York Times, August 28, 1914: “Red Cross Bazaar At Newport Today; Committee Expects to Realize $35,000 at Benefit Affair at the Breakers.” The Breakers, one of the outstanding landmarks of the Gilded Age, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt for Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843-1899), head of the New York Central Railway system, his wife, Alice, and their children.

Dogs as pets: The Westminster Show began in 1877 at Gilmore’s Gardens, the future site of Madison Square Garden.  While the domestication and ownership of dogs was nothing new, the idea of dogs as tranquil, pleasing additions to the household was relatively modern, rather than the utility of a dog as a hunter, retriever, or flock and cattle herder.

The room where Mr. Morris seals his fate, presumably featured as his bedroom, is the real-life, grown-up bedroom of George Wetmore at Chateau-sur-Mer.