Local to Fairfield Talk Series | Money Talks: The Gilded Age in Fairfield

Immigrant labor and innovative businessmen. Domestic servants and wealthy vacationers. Growing public need and local benefactors. Contradictions characterize the Gilded Age in Fairfield. The “Gilded Age” (1865-1912) was a period of immense growth in America known for lavish expressions of wealth and cavernous class distinctions. In 1873, Mark Twain gave the era its name with the novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. Tremendous social and economic changes could be also found in Fairfield—changes that would not have been possible without the working class supporting the grand lifestyle of the upper classes.

In conjunction with the Fairfield Museum’s special exhibition Money Talks: The Gilded Age in Fairfield, join Walt Matis to discover some of the industrialists, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs from the Fairfield area, including P.T. Barnum, Annie Burr and Oliver Gould Jennings, Dr. Ira DeVer Warner, and Jonathan and Harriet V.S. Thorne, alongside the people who made their lifestyles possible.

Co-presented with the Fairfield Public Library

Free

PLEASE NOTE: This program will be take place at the Fairfield Public Library.

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Image: Postcard of Sunnieholme and its gardens, c. 1910-1930. Fairfield Museum Postcard Collection.