The First Gilded Age's Take on Philanthropy

Hudson Yards opened for public viewing today in Manhattan. Assessing this New York debut, architecture critics and urban planners have used phrases to describe this development as a product of our contemporary "Second Gilded Age."

This reminded me of the character of Lily Bart in novelist Edith Wharton's "The House of Mirth" (1905) about the original Gilded Age in New York. Lily's childhood friend, Gerty Farish, a "do-gooder" who sponsors charities, saves Lily repeatedly throughout this novel. At a moment of great confidence, Lily donates money for the first time. Unsolicited, she gives impulsively to Gerty to endorse one of the charities for housing for factory girls:

The satisfaction derived from this act was all that the most ardent moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as a person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of doing good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing, but now her horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal philanthropy. Moreover, by some obscure process of logic, she felt that her momentary burst of generosity had justified all previous extravagances, and excused any in which she might subsequently indulge.

Turn-of-the-century (19th-to-20th) America remains fascinating and prophetic to its national character.