Historian Fact Checks Gilded Age Slop

The streets just weren't that clean.

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That's really bad. I hate that image.

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I'm the host of The Gilded Gentleman podcast.

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You think you'd survive the Gilded Age?

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I would have, but it's… [Carl sighing]

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Gloves, a hat and a vial of self-confidence.

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Retail therapy. Oh, you have no idea.

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This was the thing about buying coke

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Like, what is this? This is like twisted.

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Well, certainly there were some questionable substances

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of something like this actually being sold

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So where you shopped in New York in the Gilded Age,

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well, that told you a lot about who you were too.

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The stretch of Broadway from Union Square

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up to Madison Square was called Ladies' Mile.

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And that's where some of the most famous retailers

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that we've even come to know today were located.

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Near Union Square, you had Tiffany & Company.

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You also had Lord & Taylor and Brooks Brothers.

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Now, this was called the carriage trade,

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which means that it catered to ladies in carriages.

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you would do your shopping, [pen scratching]

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and then you would pile your packages into your carriage

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that was for another class of clientele

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because that's where in the early 1870s

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they built…

Original source: https://www.wired.com/