Gilding the lilies

The sumptuousness of New York's Gilded Age extends beyond architecture to a host of gardens and features still on show today.

- CLARE GLEESON

The social jostling of the Knickerbocker families and the nouveau riche portrayed in Julian Fellowes' popular television series The T Gilded Age has highlighted the excess and extravagance that characterised New York's architecture of the time.

Fans will be delighted to know that production has officially begun on a second season. But in the meantime, for those who would like to see a little of the greener side of the New York of the Russells and the van Rhijns (the show's fictional versions of families such as the Astors and Vanderbilts), a trip to explore the city's parks and gardens is worth adding to your bucket list.

The centre of New York in the Gilded Age - the boom period that ran roughly from the 1870s into the early 20th century - was Fifth Avenue, which edges Central Park. At the heart of Manhattan and little changed since the beginning of the 20th century, the park was where society's elite families called "the Four Hundred" - rode, boated and rendezvoused. To be included in this group, a family had to be separated by at least three generations from the person who had made the family fortune. The US$1,000,000 in cash also required was not enough in itself to be accepted socially, as The Gilded Age character Bertha Russell discovers.

Within the park, both individuals and nature are celebrated. Monuments to New York notables include an impressive memorial wall to architect Richard Morris Hunt, a favourite of the "robber barons", as the era's powerful industrialists were dubbed. Hunt was the creator of several buildings on Fifth Avenue, as well as various Vanderbilt mansions. He also designed the Metropolitan Museum of Art's main entry hall and facade.