The Antielitist Elite

The cultural transformations of the 1960s and 1970s created problems and opportunities for elites. In these decades the upper- and middle classes went from being seen as the wellspring of social virtue in Victorian culture to being perceived as repressed, stuffy, and out of touch; after all, they were the prime beneficiaries of a status quo that was now found wanting. From lording it over commoners in the eighteenth century, to loathing the dangerous classes in the nineteenth century, many elite New Yorkers came around to romanticizing African-Americans and other lower-class groups as exemplars of human spirit and social justice. These actions were in many cases genuine, yet in espousing civil rights causes and tackling discrimination and poverty, in exposing the falseness and superficiality of genteel society, upper-class New Yorkers also established their own heightened sensitivity as anti-elitists and their own legitimacy. Corporate elites thus championed achievement and diversity as the foundation of a more democratic, anti-elitist elite.

Conclusion

In June 2010, 18-year old Justin Hudson used his delivery of the graduating speech at Hunter College High School to challenge admissions standards there that had resulted in declining numbers of African-American and Latino students. In his speech, Hudson questioned the very idea of merit that had emerged in the 1970s, an understanding that rested on the two pillars of achievement and diversity that were the foundation of anti-elitism. In pinpointing the social and economic basis of hereditary meritocracy, Hudson attacked the legitimacy of the anti-elitist elite. He identified the central flaw with the present-day understanding of merit by condemning elites for distorting and privileging merit to the point that it reinforced instead of democratizing hierarchies. Ironically, anti-elitism had become the basis of a new upper class.

Making Spaces of Their Own

From the standpoint of the upper class, the most significant development in the early twentieth century was an organizational transformation that gave rise to the corporate executive. As corporations grew larger and more complex, salaried managers became the cornerstone of modern business enterprises. Senior executives and their families and close associates formed the corporate elite – and New York’s was easily the largest and most powerful in the nation. The mode of life these corporate elites constructed and the ideology they and their successors formulated became the basis of a new upper class that in time would challenge the prerogatives and meanings of the Gilded Age upper class. Corporate elites cared more about managing these gigantic organizations than about social pedigree, and they took pride in their educational and career successes. Their attention to career and their work ethic gave them a middle-class orientation, yet they also wanted to separate themselves from those in the broader middle class who had not reached their level of wealth and status. They did so by means of their elite suburban residences, their membership in country clubs, and the preparatory schools where they sent their children.

A Dynamic Businessman’s Aristocracy

Chapters 5 and 6 both examine the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century. The single most momentous change to hit the upper class during this period was the enlargement and enrichment of the city’s elites. These pressures had existed to a degree before the Civil War, but rapid economic growth heightened their intensity and made them the central feature of upper-class life in the second half of the nineteenth century. Families like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers accumulated fortunes that dwarfed those of the Astors and Lorillards from earlier in the century, widening the income gap within the upper class as well as between it and middle- and lower-class New Yorkers. As a result of the structural instabilities caused by the dynamic urban economy and the lack of a titled American ruling class, along with the cultural strains caused by the nation’s democratic ethos, the upper class of New York City has throughout its existence been prone to thoroughgoing social and cultural changes. The intensification of these demographic and economic pressures in the second half of the nineteenth century raised concerns within that upper class about the sources of its legitimacy and the need for more coherent and restrictive social and cultural codes.

Uncertain Adjustments

In the 1780s and 1790s, the old configuration of rank and hierarchy slowly gave way to demands for greater pluralism and equality, patriarchal leaders had to share the political sphere with representatives from other social groups, and an invigorated market economy created new fears and uncertainties. Even as they unflinchingly asserted their right to governance, upper-class New Yorkers were being forced to acknowledge in new ways the presence of the less privileged. That was a legacy of the Revolution and its immediate aftermath. For elites, the challenge of organizing new relationships with commoners was the main development of this time period. The loss of the national capital (to Philadelphia, in 1790) ensured that New York would continue to evolve as a business-oriented city and that business would be the main source of wealth and prestige for urban elites but upper-class New Yorkers remained fearful and apprehensive about materialism and did not yet embrace it fully.

All for the Union

For all the social chaos that phenomenal economic growth and heavy immigration had produced earlier in the century, upper-class New Yorkers had generally been optimistic that hoi polloi possessed enough self-control and independence to take direction from their betters and accept their proper place in the body politic. But the New York City draft riots of 1863 – the worse urban disorder in American history – seemed to show that entire communities lacked the self-discipline and orderliness required of the citizenry of a democratic nation and instead were prone to a savagery that had ripped the city apart. Drawing on their memories of the draft riots and on Victorian cultural values, the upper class utilized the Civil War to counter the blurring of class boundaries and social credentials caused by urban growth of the first half of the century. They came to classify came to classify many workers and immigrants as dangerous classes that threatened the social order- and themselves as a community of heritage and feeling that provided leadership in government, the economy, and society. At bottom these representations involved social control, and upper-class people used them to help harden class lines and gain an understanding of themselves and the rest of urban society that was coherent and compelling.

Wealth

Between 1820 and 1860, New York City experienced phenomenal economic growth that enlarged and enriched the urban upper class. Rapid growth brought in newcomers like John Jacob Astor, introduced new sources of merit, and put enormous weight on the pursuit of business success and on the accumulation of wealth. Merchants became distinct and self-conscious group who were now on top of the urban status hierarchy. The increased emphasis on wealth and enterprise weakened much of the old opposition to materialism, but anti-materialism did not so much disappear as become reactive to business dominance, with members of the existing upper class reacting to nouveau riches by stressing their own refinement, learning, family history, and so forth. Two key characteristics of the New York City upper class surfaced in this period. One was internal complexity. As the upper class became larger and wealthier, multiple and partially competing ways of belonging to it arose, and by the 1850s it had split into different economic and social factions. The second was a permanent malleability. The dynamic urban economy would cause the upper class to experience recurring social and cultural changes and meant that from now on the relationship that the upper class had with the city and with other social groups would repeatedly shift.

“The Best Mart on the Continent”

Chapter 1 concentrates on the 1750s and early 1760s when New York City was a minor seaport and provincial capital within an Atlantic economy of empires and trading. In a colonial seaport whose life’s blood was commerce, merchants were the people who made the principal economic decision. From around 1700, a few wealthy merchants – known as “great merchants” – accumulated fortunes that supplied a material basis for a luxurious way of life. New York’s merchants conceived of themselves and were seen by others as being part of a larger provincial upper class that also incorporated royal officials, planters, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. This upper class had taken shape between the 1680s and the 1720s, driven by the expansion of the trans-Atlantic trade. It was characterized by its relative openness and its preoccupation with individual economic advancement. Compared to the stuffy and backward-looking elites found elsewhere in the colonies, the New York upper class was relatively dynamic, adaptable, and aggressive. However, the standing of merchants within this New York upper class was compromised by the code of gentility and by the place of royal officials atop the status hierarchy. The incompatibility of gentility with overly aggressive money-making and the privileged status of royal administrators relegated merchants to a secondary position in that upper class.

The Ways of Millionaireville

This chapter explores continues the main themes of the chapter 5. It analyzes the efforts of the Gilded Age upper class to exclude unsuitable outsiders and raise its own standards and define its legitimacy via an examination of a new upper-class neighborhood that emerged in this period, the upper class’ embrace of the European aristocracy, its pursuit of genealogy, and the creation of the Four Hundred as an ultra-exclusive social grouping. However, the chapter also investigates how the Gilded Age upper class provided vital leadership that improved urban economic and cultural infrastructures, including the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.