The grandiosity of “The Gilded Age” wasn’t just about clothes and servants. To scale the show, the production team had to go big.
Set in 1880s New York City, the team on the HBO series that premiered Monday were tasked with recreating a world that barely exists today. Heiress Caroline Astor’s home was demolished and made way for the Empire State Building. An office building sits in the plot once owned by horsebreeder William K. Vanderbilt. The Bostwick Mansion, built by a founding partner of Standard Oil, is now a luxury apartment building.
So directors Michael Engler and Salli Richardson-Whitfield went to Newport, Rhode Island, where they filmed at The Breakers, Marble House and Rosecliff. They shot at houses along the Hudson and the Gold Coast of Long Island. For exterior scenes, they filmed in Troy, New York, near Albany, where they could shut down streets and town squares. Sometimes they filled in with special effects — like the giant disembodied hand of the Statue of Liberty that sat in Madison Square for six years.
