Old money, new money: Beaux Arts style gets attention on HBO

By LEANNE ITALIE
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The style called Beaux Arts translates simply as “fine arts.” It was anything but simple, though, in the hands of New York City’s wealthiest families. They were called Astor, Carnegie, Frick, Morgan, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt, to name a few. The ruling class and their architects produced some of the city’s landmark structures during the Beaux Arts period at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The style’s popularity spanned the 1870s to the 1930s. Interest in it has been renewed by the HBO Max series “The Gilded Age.” There’s also a new book by an architect and educator that looks at the dirt and details of key New York buildings from that era.