Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Mrs. Astor’s Lost Fifth Avenue Gallery-Ballroom: Masterpieces Beneath the Skylight, New York, c. 1897. (watermarks do not appear on the actual artwork.)
Original vintage glass camera negative (not for sale, display only)
PiP_Editions
Print carefully fitted in 18 X 24" Bright White 100% cotton pre-cut Museum Exhibition mat board fully assembled with a 4-ply beveled window and a 2-ply backing board, hinged together with linen tape
33 x 48.3 cm
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Step inside one of the most spectacular lost interiors of America’s Gilded Age—the gallery-ballroom of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor, celebrated queen of New York society, and her son, John Jacob Astor IV.
Designed by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt, the Astors’ immense double mansion stood at 840–841 Fifth Avenue at East 65th Street. Its soaring, sixty-foot-long ballroom also served as a private art gallery. Daylight streamed through an extraordinary stained-glass skylight, illuminating walls crowded with European paintings, richly carved architectural ornament, marble sculpture, sumptuous upholstered furniture and a monumental fireplace worthy of a royal palace. Here, beneath the masterpieces, members of New York’s legendary “Four Hundred” gathered for some of the most exclusive balls and receptions of the era.
Several important paintings can be recognized in this remarkably detailed photograph. Dominating the upper left wall is Jules Joseph Lefebvre’s sensuous Odalisque of 1874, now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Below it hangs a monumental cattle scene identified in historical accounts as Émile van Marcke’s Dans les Dunes. To the right of the fireplace appears Ferdinand Roybet’s The Connoisseurs, a richly costumed scene of gentlemen examining works of art. The Astor gallery also contained paintings by such celebrated artists as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jules Breton, Édouard Detaille, Constant Troyon, Adolf Schreyer, William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Carolus-Duran.
The mansion was completed in 1896 and demolished only three decades later, making this image far more than an architectural photograph. It is a window into a vanished Fifth Avenue palace—and into the private world where extraordinary art, immense wealth and the rituals of Gilded Age society came together beneath a glowing glass ceiling.
This museum-quality fine art print is produced from a high-resolution master image developed directly from an original historic glass plate negative preserved in the archive of an important turn-of-the-century photographic news agency.
Past in Present owns the original historic glass plate negative from which this image is produced. All original negatives represented in the Past in Present collection are preserved in our private archive.
Past in Present is the exclusive source for fine art prints produced from this particular original negative and this specific historic image.