Where was ‘The Gilded Age’ filmed?

Julian Fellowes’ long-awaited ‘American Downton’ is finally with us, after a decade in gestation and the inevitable delays of Covid. Fortunately, fans of his work will not be disappointed: The Gilded Age gives us all the interplay, intrigue, social history and enormous houses we could want. 

Like Downton Abbey – and his recent visit to Bath with Belgravia – the series presents an important city at a time of social change, exemplified by two households on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and East 61st Street. There’s the old NY household of the Brook sisters, waspish Agnes (Christine Baranski, taking the Maggie Smith role) and kindly Ada (Cynthia Nixon), and the Russells, robber baron George (Morgan Spector) and his socially ambitious wife Bertha (Carrie Coon), whose new money has built them a royal palace next door.

While Fellowes is all about character, ensuring that there are subplots of every sort from mysterious deaths to lost dogs, scale is also a defining feature. Here, it’s the representation of the monumental architecture of the time, where unthinkable sums of money were put into demonstrations of wealth.

Instrumental in bringing this to the screen was location manager Lauri Pitkus, whose CV includes shows set in New York of a different era including The Undoing, Nurse Jackie and The Goldfinch. Here, she tells us how The Gilded Age was brought to life.

Troy, New York

For the majority of the exterior street scenes, we’re in Troy, New York. Made rich by trade, this was one of the country’s most prosperous cities in the 19th century and many of its landmark buildings have been preserved since this time, making it popular with filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, who shot The Age of Innocence here.

For The Gilded Age, the city becomes Manhattan, and most importantly Fifth Avenue. ‘To me, Troy is the most exciting thing to see in The Gilded Age,’ says Lauri Pitkus. ‘We selected four to five blocks that we dressed. We had the cooperation of every store owner and we refaced all the buildings with our signage and it was pretty spectacular. The architecture is there so we could have long-lens shots from the areas where we dressed and in the background, you can see the continuation of 1850s row houses.’

Apart from facings and signage, one of the most important parts of the job was resurfacing the roads. ‘That’s where things got really complicated,’ Pitkus says, ‘being able to take the main public square of their town and allowing us to close it for three weeks while we brought in dump trucks of dirt and laid it on the street. I called it Operation Desert Gilded because it got very dry and dusty and it was blowing everywhere.’

The production took over much of what’s now called the Central Troy Historic District, along 2nd and 3rd Streets and around Washington Park and Monument Square. For the shopping trip in Episode 4, we see Marian (Louisa Jacobson) and Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) visit Bloomingdale Brothers as recreated around Troy’s Monument Square, while in Episode 3 they visit the hand of the Statue of Liberty, on temporary exhibition in Madison Square Park, as represented by Washington Park.

Troy’s wealth of grand homes also provide the entrances to homes of other characters: ‘The exterior of the Astors, the exterior of the Morris house, exterior of the Fane house, of the boarding house – those are all Troy locations,’ explains Pitkus. ‘The Fane house is particularly famous in Troy – it’s The Castle, it was built in the 1890s and was called the John Paine Mansion, and it has a really eclectic style.’

Newport, Rhode Island

This historic town in Rhode Island acted both as itself and as Manhattan. ‘It’s an amalgam,’ says Pitkus, ‘it’ll be really tricky for people to put it together. Most of what we filmed was in homes operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County, who were extremely cooperative and supportive. We were terrifically fortunate to have our “night in the museum” – we could move furniture and bring in our set dressing and we were even permitted to change window treatments.’

Houses used included some of the area’s most legendary, including Rosecliff, built by silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs and seen in 1974’s film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, which features as the exterior of the home of the scandalous Mrs Chamberlain (Jeanne Tripplehorn). From The Breakers, the Renaissance-style palace built by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the production borrowed the astounding Music Room, built in France and shipped over in the 1890s, as the ballroom at the Russell house, which was otherwise created on set in New York. The Elms, the summer residence of coal baron Edward Julius Berwind on Bellevue Avenue, built in 1901 in emulation of the Château d’Asnières near Paris, was used as the kitchens of the Russell house, where we spend time with the downstairs characters.

Other houses played multiple parts, including Château-sur-Mer, also on Bellevue Avenue, built by merchant William Shepard Wetmore in the 1850s in Italian style and then given a French makeover 20 years later. ‘Château-sur-Mer is maybe our biggest location,’ says Pitkus. ‘We used the exterior for Mrs Astor’s Beechwood House, which is interesting because the real thing still stands not far from it and looks nothing like it. We also shot the interior of the boarding house where Oscar van Rhijn has a tête à tête, and Agnes’s bedroom is there too. We also did a dining room scene there.’

Our first visit to Newport itself comes in Episode 1 with a party at the astonishing clifftop mansion owned by Mrs Fish. ‘That’s my favourite house we used,’ says Pitkus. ‘It’s The Ledges, owned by the Cushing family. It was built originally by Robert Cushing and then was inherited by his son Howard, the painter, and now I believe it’s his great-grandson and his family.’

Also offering panoramic views is another house, Indian Spring, here used as the home of social gatekeeper Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane). ‘We used that for its backdrop when McAllister has a get-together with the ladies, but we didn’t use the house because it’s been redone. It’s set on a big rocky cliff and the setting’s spectacular – you know you’re in Newport because of the views of the ocean.’

Tarrytown

For Episode 2’s visit to the home of Aurora Fane (Kelli O’Hara), the production filmed in the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, on the east banks of the Hudson, making use of a reception room dominated by a stained glass window, as well as the dining room. Built in 1838 by New York City mayor William Paulding Jr, this Gothic Revival wonder was best known as the home of robber baron Jay Gould and is now a museum.

Long Island

For the interior of Mr Russell’s workplace, the production travelled not far from their New York studio to Sands Point. ‘That’s Hempstead House, another Gould house, not Jay Gould but his son Howard, which was passed onto the Guggenheims,’ explains Pitkus. The estate encapsulates two buildings, and at one time incorporated a sunken Palm Court that housed orchids and an aviary, as well as the walnut-panelled library used to film Russell’s office.

Moving to the south of Long Island, they also used another historic house, Rock Hall, to stand in for Marion’s old home in Pennsylvania in Episode 1: ‘It’s very typical Georgian colonial, built in the 1760s by a sugar plantation owner and has that kind of feel when you’re inside.’

Manhattan, New York City

Although few locations in Manhattan were used, Episode 2’s visit to Central Park is very much the real thing, making use of the Bethesda Terrace and Fountain built in the 1860s. Filming in this crowded area was made easier by Covid restrictions. ‘To make that scene work we had to have background actors,’ says Pitkus, ‘and what really made it work was that Central Park allowed us to set up huge tents across the way at Rumsey Playfield when they had cancelled their activities, so we could dress everybody there and just walk them to the set. Shooting there was another huge coup for us.’

The Gilded Age starts on Tuesday 25 January 2022 on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV