Gilded and Non-Gilded Ages
In which we look at fake 1882 and real 2003
This edition of the newsletter takes advantage of a new Substack feature that presents photos really big on the website so you can see a lot of little details. If you’re reading this as an email, consider clicking through for the full experience.
Finding the Gilded Age backlot
I’ve been watching and mostly enjoying The Gilded Age on HBO, about a rivalry between old and new money on the Upper East Side in 1882.
One of the best things about the show is the official companion podcast, which goes into the history behind the story. It also describes how the show recreates the opulent homes of the era by filming on location in real mansions from a similar time period, and on sets that have been built in the style those lavish houses.
I learned from the podcast that the main outdoor set is a backlot they built on Long Island in what was previously a valley of ashes pile of dirt just off the interstate. So I thought I’d see if I could find the set on Google Maps. And it was actually pretty easy to find! Here, I’ve labeled some of the set to help orient you with what part of Manhattan this is supposed to be on the show:
I’d love to walk around that lot and imagine I’m in 1880s New York. I wonder if they leave the set up when they’re not filming. I don’t see any sort of gate on Google Maps. Hmm. (Seriously, nobody should trespass on the set. But if you do, send me pictures. But don’t.)
It reminds me of the time I directed a video on 20th Century Fox’s “New York Street” backlot in Los Angeles. Here’s a photo I took while I was there:
It almost looks like it could pass for New York until you notice the palm trees peeking out on the left side.
But here is what the backs of those buildings look like:
And the illusion is shattered.
The Gilded Age actor with a voice twin
Carrie Coon’s manner of speaking on The Gilded Age sounded so familiar that I had to pause the show and think about who she sounds like. Then it hit me. She sounds exactly like Audrey Meadows playing Alice Kramden on The Honeymooners.
So naturally I tweeted:
It took a full week for someone else to reply:
And then a few days later:
Maybe The Honeymooners isn’t top-of-mind for most people, so it’s just me, Leslie and Alice (one of these days!) who have noticed. But it’s true. Go watch some Honeymooners episodes and then watch The Gilded Age and tell me you don’t hear it. They are voice twins.
The Not-So-Gilded Age of 2003
Most homes from the real Gilded Age don’t exist anymore, having been torn down or gutted and turned into smaller apartments. But it’s still fun to see them recreated to see how people lived back then. It’s a historic version of Real Estate Voyeurism.
That’s what entices us to watch shows like House Hunters or MTV Cribs or read the New York Times series The Hunt which follows people looking for a place to live in the city. All these things appeal to our curiosity about how other people live and what money can buy.
When I lived in New York, I made a point of documenting everywhere I lived for future memories — and I suppose in case anyone needs to recreate a New York apartment from the early aughts for some future TV show. So let me take you back in time on a Real Estate Voyeurism journey to look at New York apartment life 20 years ago.
Join me in 2003, when Friends was still on the air and Michael Bloomberg had just been elected mayor. Let’s meet on East 11th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue, in the North end of the East Village.
It was about 15 months after the attacks of 9/11, and New York still hadn’t really recovered. There was a big hole in the ground where the towers had stood, and people weren’t moving downtown like they used to. Places were renting for less than they had been just a couple years before.
I found a studio apartment in the East Village, approximately 600 square feet, for $1,295 per month. That was actually $205 less than I was paying in Queens for a 2 bedroom. This was much less space but the location couldn’t be beat. I’ll take it!
This is the entire apartment:
That’s it. One room.
For the future TV show set designers out there, let me highlight a few details, from left to right:
A smiley-face salt shaker that looks a lot like an emoji, but they weren’t that popular back then so it’s probably just a “Have a nice day” smiley. It was a gift.
A bottle of Tia Maria coffee liqueur
A ceramic cookie jar in the shape of the Beetlejuice house, which I think calls for some detail photos:
A microwave on a rolling cart because the “kitchen” (which we’ll get to in a minute) has barely any countertop space
A bookcase from IKEA, and a hat, coat, and scarf hanging on a coat rack
The door behind the coat rack was the apartment’s main entrance
A blue loveseat that you wouldn’t know is actually a recliner
Above the bed is a triptych made out of three plates from the Ishihara Test of Color Vision which I enlarged and framed because I’m fascinated by visual perception:
It’s called 57-74-8 or 35-21-3 because you may see different numbers depending on your type of color blindness A lamp purchased at a thrift store that looks good until you touch it and discover that the orange glass lampshade is actually plastic
An actually nice coffee table, also from a thrift store
In the foreground an IKEA desk with Dell computer and accessories
Let’s go stand behind the bed and look in the other direction:
Ah, this is probably the more interesting view because it gives a glimpse at technology and media from 2003. Let’s dive in, again from left to right:
A neat little stand from a thrift store that’s designed to hold poker chips and playing cards, with a plant on it and a box of mail-order contact lenses
A Ghostbusters t-shirt
A dresser upon which there is all my CDs, a paper trimmer, another plant, and the box from my 40GB iPod. It was the all-touch model that had the four buttons across the top
A non-functioning boarded-up fireplace with a bunch of stuff on the mantle. Let’s take a closer look:
From left to right:
Three big candles blocking a framed photo of my niece and an Etch-A-Sketch
A marquee from a Pac-Man arcade game wrapped in bubble wrap
A menora
A Rubik’s Homer
A framed 3-D comic book from 1953
A framed poster of a 3-D movie also from 1953
A bendable Jack Skellington
A mini-replica of an old radio that you wind up and it plays Those Were the Days
An 8 mm Electra DeJur wind-up movie camera
A framed vintage postcard of the NYC skyline
A book of New Yorker covers
A statue of King Kong with a tiny Fay Wray
A vintage National Geographic atlas
A 1942 NYU yearbook obtained in 2002 from the Hotel Delmonico on Park Avenue and 59th Street. Donald Trump had just bought the building to turn into condos and they were selling off anything you could find inside. It was mostly smelly furniture and a ton of alarm clocks. But I found this book in room 22C. It had belonged to someone named Roslyn Komack and was signed by all her friends who wrote lovely notes like the one from Rodney Thompson that says “I don't know what the hell to write to the swellest of the swell.” I bought it for $5.
My iPod on its charging dock
Is this stuff interesting to anyone? I’m second-guessing this section of the newsletter. But it’s too late to turn back. If you’re still with me, let’s take a closer look at what’s below the mantle:
The most obvious thing is the big RCA TV. At some point in the next couple years I replaced it with a flatscreen TV. Below that we have a DVD player, a VHS player, and my cable box, and a handful of VHS tapes and assorted DVDs or CDs.
Over on the left side, we have:
A catalog from B&H and several issues of PDN (the Photo District News)
Half my DVD collection. This half includes: Frankenstein, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Reefer Madness, Edward Scissorhands, Comin’ At Ya!, Clash of the Titans, American Beauty, Brazil, This is Spinal Tap, UHF, Metropolis, The Abyss, Max Fleischer’s Superman cartoons, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Beetlejuice, Sleepy Hollow, Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, Reservoir Dogs, Memento, Tron, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, V: The Miniseries, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC series, E.T., Antz, Koyaanisqatsi, Being John Malkovich, Back to the Future Trilogy, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Airplane!, Earth Girls Are Easy, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters 2, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pulp Fiction, and True Romance
Cassettes
A Nintendo Virtual Boy
A Nintendo Game Boy
A TomyTronic 3D handheld game (I think there’s another one behind the Game Boy)
A Q*Bert children’s storybook
A Frogger mini-tabletop arcade game
A Q*Bert mini-tabletop arcade game
To the right of the TV, we have:
The 1998 Martin & Porter Video Movie Guide because looking up movies in a book was a thing we did back before Rotten Tomatoes existed; also other assorted reference and coffee table books.
The other half of my DVD collection: Robocop, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Citizen Kane, Ghost World, Juniper Tree, Vertigo, Rebecca, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, Casablanca, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lady Vanishes, The Phantom of the Opera, The Terminator, Blade Runner, Time Bandits, Dancer in the Dark, Terminator 2, The Birds, Creepshow, Pumpkin, Running on Empty, Little Big Man, Hellraiser, War Games, Volumen, Six Feet Under, The House on Haunted Hill, SNL: 25 Years of Music, Director’s Series: Spike Jonze, and Director’s Series: Chris Cunningham.
A Sony dual-cassette, 5-CD stereo
A Sega Dreamcast
Looking again at the wide shot, you can see that next to my media center is a small closet, my desk, and then the kitchen:
That’s it. That’s the whole kitchen: a mini-fridge with just enough counter space for a coffee maker and a dish rack; a sink; and an oven. Luckily I lived near a hundred amazing delicious restaurants, so I didn’t lack for any good meals.
On the right, you can see a glimpse into the bathroom, with pink tile. I won’t bother showing you the photos of the bathroom. It was small but unremarkable, aside from being pink.
The last thing I’ll point out, just barely visible in that second wide shot, is a frame hanging above the reclining love seat. This is a collection of 16 photos taken from my previous apartment in Queens, looking over the Manhattan skyline:
And this concludes our tour of my 2003 apartment. That started out seeming like it would be fun and interesting, but now it feels like it was tedious and self-indulgent. But once I was half-way through, you know, I just had to commit. If it wasn’t your cup of tea, I apologize. And if you’re a set designer working on an early-2000s period piece and you got something out of this, then you’re welcome!
And that brings us to the end of another newsletter. I send these out on Tuesdays which means a new episode of The Gilded Age came out last night. Make sure you watch it with Audrey Meadows in mind and try to tell me Carrie Coon doesn’t sound just like her.
(Oddly it only works in one direction. Audrey Meadows doesn’t sound like Carrie Coon. Carrie Coon sounds like Audrey Meadows.)
Until next time, awaaay we go!
David
I’m red-green colorblind (deutan) and your Ishahara plates read as 57-21-3 to me!
Where are the photos of the pink-tiled bathroom?