July 15, 2026
399: The 400
A gatekeeper of the Gilded Age makes a list in the late 1800s.
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WEBVTT
00:00.171 --> 00:05.148
[SPEAKER_00]: Social suicide, I'm Jason Horton, I'm Rebecca Leib, and this is Ghost Town.
00:21.897 --> 00:31.786
[SPEAKER_01]: In the 1870s and 1890s, whether you fit into the fashionable, moneyed East Coast High Society was dictated by one woman and one woman alone.
00:32.466 --> 00:41.494
[SPEAKER_01]: This individual's single-handedly determined who was celebrated in New York's gilded age, or who would be shunned by the most important families in Manhattan.
00:42.397 --> 00:53.502
[SPEAKER_01]: Her name was Caroline Schermerhorn Aster, and with input from her southern fellow status-obsessed confidant and sidekick Ward McAllister, she would change the course of history.
00:54.002 --> 00:58.684
[SPEAKER_01]: With a secret, scandalous list, she called the 400.
01:00.145 --> 01:07.095
[SPEAKER_01]: The lead-up to the 400 began after the American Civil War when the population of New York City grew exponentially.
01:07.756 --> 01:15.628
[SPEAKER_01]: Immigrants and new money westerners became some of the largest players in New York, Boston and Rhode Island, social hubs of the old guard.
01:16.469 --> 01:20.051
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a scary thing to be in established elite for many reasons.
01:20.331 --> 01:27.054
[SPEAKER_01]: Classicism, racism, ethnocentrism, cultural paranoia, being just a couple of reasons.
01:28.134 --> 01:31.295
[SPEAKER_01]: This new breed of tycoons, Andrew Carnegie, J.D.
01:31.355 --> 01:39.379
[SPEAKER_01]: Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt, to name just a few, had made their fortunes in exploding industries like railroads, oil, and steel.
01:40.379 --> 01:51.988
[SPEAKER_01]: They realized that money could buy them a lot of traction in these older circles, making them easily acquire both economic and political power that other families had spent years, even generations accumulating.
01:52.991 --> 01:58.317
[SPEAKER_01]: Entering is as Caroline Aster, the hero that came in to protect the old New York 1%.
01:59.018 --> 02:07.186
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter that their mansions might be built by the same eminent architect, Richard Morris Hunt, or their children would be educated at the same universities like Harvard and Yale.
02:07.827 --> 02:12.712
[SPEAKER_01]: Aster was ready to draw a strict line in the sand, old guard, or new money.
02:13.773 --> 02:20.939
[SPEAKER_01]: Simply known in society by this time as the Mrs. Aster, she was born in 1830 to the city's Nicarbacher elite.
02:21.459 --> 02:27.965
[SPEAKER_01]: Her family could trace their lineage back to the earliest settlers in colonial North America during the 16 and 17 hundreds.
02:28.845 --> 02:34.410
[SPEAKER_01]: Her ancestors were the original Anglo-Dutch families that basically founded New York City.
02:35.476 --> 02:41.061
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1853, she married into the Aster family, a name synonymous with wealth and opulence.
02:41.762 --> 02:46.806
[SPEAKER_01]: The Aster has made their unprecedented fortune in the fur trade in post-revolutionary America.
02:47.407 --> 02:53.312
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they made another fortune in the opium trade, and later they made another fortune in New York City Real Estate.
02:53.773 --> 02:55.494
[SPEAKER_01]: Not bad gigs, I would say.
02:56.355 --> 03:02.467
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the standards of the day, she was the one who brought a higher social status and pedigree to their marriage.
03:03.269 --> 03:08.098
[SPEAKER_01]: She was the one who brought a higher social status and therefore pedigree to their marriage.
03:09.361 --> 03:22.330
[SPEAKER_01]: Together with her husband William Backhouse, Aster Junior, she had five children, including her fashionable daughter, Carrie Aster, and son, John Jacob Aster IV, who tragically would die on the Titanic in 1912.
03:23.250 --> 03:35.098
[SPEAKER_01]: After her remaining children grew up, she basically exploited the advantage of family and wealth she was both born and married into, and became the known and established gatekeeper to the world of acceptable New York society.
03:36.536 --> 03:39.257
[SPEAKER_01]: But she didn't work alone, at least not entirely.
03:39.937 --> 03:46.638
[SPEAKER_01]: A southern lawyer and male socialite, yes it is a thing, named Ward McAllister, was equally obsessed with New York status.
03:47.338 --> 04:02.582
[SPEAKER_01]: Born to a wealthy family in Savannah, Georgia, with remote ties to the Aster lineage himself, McAllister was an attorney and early taste maker, having been one of the first people to buy land and marry a Ganset Bay in Rhode Island, where the rich would eventually all go to summer.
04:03.482 --> 04:09.267
[SPEAKER_01]: McAllister was obsessed with European custom and how it met American wealth, his wealth to be exact.
04:09.967 --> 04:14.571
[SPEAKER_01]: McAllister desperately wanted social recognition by which he termed the ton.
04:15.291 --> 04:20.736
[SPEAKER_01]: The ton was kind of a shorthand for the state of being fashionable, the creme de la creme, the best.
04:21.857 --> 04:26.160
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, in 1872, McAllister founded the Society of Patriarchs
04:27.221 --> 04:29.523
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of the 400 before it was the 400.
04:30.363 --> 04:33.926
[SPEAKER_01]: The Society of Patriarchs sounds a little men's right-see, and you know what?
04:33.986 --> 04:35.568
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not totally not that.
04:36.208 --> 04:41.313
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a group of 25 gentleman quote unquote from surprise surprise, New York High Society.
04:41.853 --> 04:46.937
[SPEAKER_01]: The group was quote representative of men of worth, respectability, and responsibility.
04:47.698 --> 05:02.185
[SPEAKER_01]: Beginning in 1885, the Patriarchs threw a ball every year, known creatively as the Patriarchs ball, to which each member was entitled to invite four ladies and five gentlemen, thus establishing the invitees as fit for society.
05:02.965 --> 05:05.427
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the press had a feel day around it.
05:06.587 --> 05:12.089
[SPEAKER_01]: Being the best of the best New Yorkers in all of the New York land, McAllister and Mrs. Aster met each other.
05:12.529 --> 05:22.472
[SPEAKER_01]: Became friends, and soon McAllister, with all of his ball expertise, started assisting Mrs. Aster with her parties in her mansion at 350 Fifth Avenue.
05:23.092 --> 05:29.614
[SPEAKER_01]: If that address sounds familiar to you, that makes sense, because it's now the site of the Empire State Building.
05:30.654 --> 05:36.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Mrs. Aster herself was known to wear dark jewel tones and often purple and was always drenched in diamonds.
05:36.939 --> 05:40.081
[SPEAKER_01]: She famously wore a piece of jewelry once owned by Marie Antoinette.
05:40.782 --> 05:53.592
[SPEAKER_01]: By the 1880s, these parties became annual balls, must attend events of the year, always thrown on a Monday in January with the guest list determining who was in for the rest of the year and who was out.
05:54.432 --> 05:58.395
[SPEAKER_01]: Think, Met Gala, but like, in a giant living room.
05:58.956 --> 06:01.537
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, your social status depended on attending.
06:01.898 --> 06:02.598
[SPEAKER_01]: No pressure, right?
06:03.559 --> 06:06.701
[SPEAKER_01]: These hand-picked guests basically evolved into the 400.
06:07.261 --> 06:16.968
[SPEAKER_01]: Reportedly, McAllister coined the phrase the 400 by declaring to the New York Tribune in 1888 that there were only, quote, about 400 people in fashionable New York society.
06:17.488 --> 06:22.292
[SPEAKER_01]: You strike people who are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make other people not at ease.
06:23.281 --> 06:24.902
[SPEAKER_01]: So who was in the 400?
06:25.682 --> 06:28.904
[SPEAKER_01]: Ironically, holy around 250 people made the cut.
06:29.544 --> 06:33.006
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone in New York wanted to know exactly who they were.
06:33.747 --> 06:41.331
[SPEAKER_01]: This knowledge of exactly who these people were on this very elite social registry would remain a mystery for years.
06:42.091 --> 06:46.594
[SPEAKER_01]: But in 1892, the world would find out exactly who the 400 were.
06:47.194 --> 06:50.196
[SPEAKER_01]: And spoiler, these people, her very rich,
06:52.897 --> 06:55.820
[SPEAKER_01]: more after this break.
06:55.880 --> 07:16.698
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1892, as a response to the competing list of suspected 400ers, published in various magazines all around New York, on February 16th, 1892, the New York Times themselves published an official list of the 400 individuals deemed acceptable by Mrs. Aster and her society lackey, Ward McAllister.
07:17.338 --> 07:27.101
[SPEAKER_01]: While the number 400 itself might seem arbitrary, some suggested it was simply because the Aster Ballroom could only hold 400 guests, the list itself was carefully curated.
07:27.621 --> 07:32.943
[SPEAKER_01]: Putting in writing the most rich and powerful people that dominated the upper echelons of New York.
07:33.663 --> 07:50.366
[SPEAKER_01]: The New York Times quoted McAllister in this piece, and in the quote he's talking about other lists and how there are 150 people and inaccurate, I have to say this quote sounds kind of insane and it's very hard for me not to do it in some kind of insane accent, but I won't.
07:51.026 --> 07:51.306
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't.
07:52.406 --> 07:56.907
[SPEAKER_01]: Just saying he does not sound very reliable and certainly not like a 400er.
07:56.927 --> 07:57.187
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's
08:02.768 --> 08:27.289
[SPEAKER_01]: quote let me explain don't you know there are three dinner dances don't you know during the season and the invitations don't you see our issue to different ladies and gentlemen each time do you understand so what each dinner dance you know are only 150 people of the highest set don't you know so during the season you see 400 different invitations are issued wait a moment and I will give you a correct list don't you know of the people who form what is known as the 400
08:28.373 --> 08:33.353
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you understand it will be authorized, reliable, and don't you know, the only correct list?
08:35.147 --> 08:42.091
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd read the whole list to you, perhaps, but we don't have that time, and really you wouldn't recognize most of the names, but a couple you definitely would.
08:42.592 --> 08:46.174
[SPEAKER_01]: The Carnegie's, the DuPont's, and of course, JP Morgan.
08:47.115 --> 08:59.843
[SPEAKER_01]: As you might have guessed from those names, the list had primarily bankers, lawyers, brokers, real estate man, and rail rotors, with one editor, Paul Dana, of the New York Sun, one publisher, one artist, and two architects.
09:00.735 --> 09:08.377
[SPEAKER_01]: It also included a mix of old money and the new Voreesh, whom asked her felt, begrudgingly, were able to partake in polite society.
09:08.877 --> 09:18.819
[SPEAKER_01]: This is best exemplified by the Vanderbilt family, an obscenely rich family who had muscled their way into the 400 by throwing insane parties with money they had made in the railroad.
09:19.199 --> 09:21.880
[SPEAKER_01]: If the storyline seems familiar to you, that makes sense.
09:22.320 --> 09:27.581
[SPEAKER_01]: The gilded age on HBO is basically based off of the Vanderbilt family, and what they
09:31.555 --> 09:47.648
[SPEAKER_01]: After McAllister finally released the names of the 400 to the New York Times, people were curious, but also very pissed, as you might understand, against the idea of a definitive list of acceptable people, and against the character of McAllister himself.
09:48.388 --> 09:55.576
[SPEAKER_01]: Even after giving exclusive take to the New York Times, all the papers called him a tri-hard, a Mr. Make-A-Lister.
09:56.117 --> 10:02.344
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course didn't help that he published a controversial Tel-Al-Memor in 1890, called Society as I have found it.
10:03.184 --> 10:07.890
[SPEAKER_01]: McAllister, after that point, was ostracized by the very group he helped construct.
10:09.133 --> 10:16.458
[SPEAKER_01]: Several years later, author O'Henry released a collection of short stories, combating this notion of the 400 entitled the 4 million.
10:17.058 --> 10:24.163
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a reaction to the very idea of the 400, communicating that every human being in New York was worthy of notice.
10:25.607 --> 10:32.613
[SPEAKER_01]: While class warfare certainly still exists, the 400 reflects an era of extreme wealth and institutionalized exclusivity.
10:33.374 --> 10:45.565
[SPEAKER_01]: As New York grew and continued to diversify on and on and on in so many ways, the idea of the 400 wasn't quite as palatable or palpable as alluring or as mysterious, of course.
10:46.265 --> 10:52.411
[SPEAKER_01]: But where the list faded and the names on it, we do have to acknowledge that they did leave a legacy.
10:53.031 --> 11:09.532
[SPEAKER_01]: These people on the list, the creators of the list were truly celebrities, legends in America's newly emerging history, and however gross and exclusionary, we have to acknowledge that it did create a new cultural and architectural landscape of New York, establishing development.
11:09.972 --> 11:22.722
[SPEAKER_01]: cultural philanthropy and institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera, the Waldorf Astoria Wall Street, the 400 basically built up New York for better or for worse.
11:23.562 --> 11:30.467
[SPEAKER_01]: In 2009, the Museum of the City of New York compiled its own version of the 400 entitled The New York City 400.
11:31.568 --> 11:40.751
[SPEAKER_01]: Of the 400 movers and shakers who made a difference in the 400 years of New York City since it was established way back in 1609.
11:41.691 --> 11:48.053
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems as though the memory around the original 400 has softened, and maybe been mostly forgotten.
11:49.033 --> 11:59.416
[SPEAKER_01]: After Mrs. Aster's death, other people tried to keep the 400 list going, but it did seem to fade into the background, or become at least less important that it once was.
12:00.511 --> 12:13.360
[SPEAKER_01]: Ironically, or appropriately, Ward McAllister, very publicly exiled from society after the 400s publication, was the only person in the 400 to make the museum's own list.
00:00.171 --> 00:05.148
[SPEAKER_00]: Social suicide, I'm Jason Horton, I'm Rebecca Leib, and this is Ghost Town.
00:21.897 --> 00:31.786
[SPEAKER_01]: In the 1870s and 1890s, whether you fit into the fashionable, moneyed East Coast High Society was dictated by one woman and one woman alone.
00:32.466 --> 00:41.494
[SPEAKER_01]: This individual's single-handedly determined who was celebrated in New York's gilded age, or who would be shunned by the most important families in Manhattan.
00:42.397 --> 00:53.502
[SPEAKER_01]: Her name was Caroline Schermerhorn Aster, and with input from her southern fellow status-obsessed confidant and sidekick Ward McAllister, she would change the course of history.
00:54.002 --> 00:58.684
[SPEAKER_01]: With a secret, scandalous list, she called the 400.
01:00.145 --> 01:07.095
[SPEAKER_01]: The lead-up to the 400 began after the American Civil War when the population of New York City grew exponentially.
01:07.756 --> 01:15.628
[SPEAKER_01]: Immigrants and new money westerners became some of the largest players in New York, Boston and Rhode Island, social hubs of the old guard.
01:16.469 --> 01:20.051
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a scary thing to be in established elite for many reasons.
01:20.331 --> 01:27.054
[SPEAKER_01]: Classicism, racism, ethnocentrism, cultural paranoia, being just a couple of reasons.
01:28.134 --> 01:31.295
[SPEAKER_01]: This new breed of tycoons, Andrew Carnegie, J.D.
01:31.355 --> 01:39.379
[SPEAKER_01]: Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbilt, to name just a few, had made their fortunes in exploding industries like railroads, oil, and steel.
01:40.379 --> 01:51.988
[SPEAKER_01]: They realized that money could buy them a lot of traction in these older circles, making them easily acquire both economic and political power that other families had spent years, even generations accumulating.
01:52.991 --> 01:58.317
[SPEAKER_01]: Entering is as Caroline Aster, the hero that came in to protect the old New York 1%.
01:59.018 --> 02:07.186
[SPEAKER_01]: No matter that their mansions might be built by the same eminent architect, Richard Morris Hunt, or their children would be educated at the same universities like Harvard and Yale.
02:07.827 --> 02:12.712
[SPEAKER_01]: Aster was ready to draw a strict line in the sand, old guard, or new money.
02:13.773 --> 02:20.939
[SPEAKER_01]: Simply known in society by this time as the Mrs. Aster, she was born in 1830 to the city's Nicarbacher elite.
02:21.459 --> 02:27.965
[SPEAKER_01]: Her family could trace their lineage back to the earliest settlers in colonial North America during the 16 and 17 hundreds.
02:28.845 --> 02:34.410
[SPEAKER_01]: Her ancestors were the original Anglo-Dutch families that basically founded New York City.
02:35.476 --> 02:41.061
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1853, she married into the Aster family, a name synonymous with wealth and opulence.
02:41.762 --> 02:46.806
[SPEAKER_01]: The Aster has made their unprecedented fortune in the fur trade in post-revolutionary America.
02:47.407 --> 02:53.312
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they made another fortune in the opium trade, and later they made another fortune in New York City Real Estate.
02:53.773 --> 02:55.494
[SPEAKER_01]: Not bad gigs, I would say.
02:56.355 --> 03:02.467
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the standards of the day, she was the one who brought a higher social status and pedigree to their marriage.
03:03.269 --> 03:08.098
[SPEAKER_01]: She was the one who brought a higher social status and therefore pedigree to their marriage.
03:09.361 --> 03:22.330
[SPEAKER_01]: Together with her husband William Backhouse, Aster Junior, she had five children, including her fashionable daughter, Carrie Aster, and son, John Jacob Aster IV, who tragically would die on the Titanic in 1912.
03:23.250 --> 03:35.098
[SPEAKER_01]: After her remaining children grew up, she basically exploited the advantage of family and wealth she was both born and married into, and became the known and established gatekeeper to the world of acceptable New York society.
03:36.536 --> 03:39.257
[SPEAKER_01]: But she didn't work alone, at least not entirely.
03:39.937 --> 03:46.638
[SPEAKER_01]: A southern lawyer and male socialite, yes it is a thing, named Ward McAllister, was equally obsessed with New York status.
03:47.338 --> 04:02.582
[SPEAKER_01]: Born to a wealthy family in Savannah, Georgia, with remote ties to the Aster lineage himself, McAllister was an attorney and early taste maker, having been one of the first people to buy land and marry a Ganset Bay in Rhode Island, where the rich would eventually all go to summer.
04:03.482 --> 04:09.267
[SPEAKER_01]: McAllister was obsessed with European custom and how it met American wealth, his wealth to be exact.
04:09.967 --> 04:14.571
[SPEAKER_01]: McAllister desperately wanted social recognition by which he termed the ton.
04:15.291 --> 04:20.736
[SPEAKER_01]: The ton was kind of a shorthand for the state of being fashionable, the creme de la creme, the best.
04:21.857 --> 04:26.160
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, in 1872, McAllister founded the Society of Patriarchs
04:27.221 --> 04:29.523
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of the 400 before it was the 400.
04:30.363 --> 04:33.926
[SPEAKER_01]: The Society of Patriarchs sounds a little men's right-see, and you know what?
04:33.986 --> 04:35.568
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not totally not that.
04:36.208 --> 04:41.313
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a group of 25 gentleman quote unquote from surprise surprise, New York High Society.
04:41.853 --> 04:46.937
[SPEAKER_01]: The group was quote representative of men of worth, respectability, and responsibility.
04:47.698 --> 05:02.185
[SPEAKER_01]: Beginning in 1885, the Patriarchs threw a ball every year, known creatively as the Patriarchs ball, to which each member was entitled to invite four ladies and five gentlemen, thus establishing the invitees as fit for society.
05:02.965 --> 05:05.427
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the press had a feel day around it.
05:06.587 --> 05:12.089
[SPEAKER_01]: Being the best of the best New Yorkers in all of the New York land, McAllister and Mrs. Aster met each other.
05:12.529 --> 05:22.472
[SPEAKER_01]: Became friends, and soon McAllister, with all of his ball expertise, started assisting Mrs. Aster with her parties in her mansion at 350 Fifth Avenue.
05:23.092 --> 05:29.614
[SPEAKER_01]: If that address sounds familiar to you, that makes sense, because it's now the site of the Empire State Building.
05:30.654 --> 05:36.519
[SPEAKER_01]: Mrs. Aster herself was known to wear dark jewel tones and often purple and was always drenched in diamonds.
05:36.939 --> 05:40.081
[SPEAKER_01]: She famously wore a piece of jewelry once owned by Marie Antoinette.
05:40.782 --> 05:53.592
[SPEAKER_01]: By the 1880s, these parties became annual balls, must attend events of the year, always thrown on a Monday in January with the guest list determining who was in for the rest of the year and who was out.
05:54.432 --> 05:58.395
[SPEAKER_01]: Think, Met Gala, but like, in a giant living room.
05:58.956 --> 06:01.537
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, your social status depended on attending.
06:01.898 --> 06:02.598
[SPEAKER_01]: No pressure, right?
06:03.559 --> 06:06.701
[SPEAKER_01]: These hand-picked guests basically evolved into the 400.
06:07.261 --> 06:16.968
[SPEAKER_01]: Reportedly, McAllister coined the phrase the 400 by declaring to the New York Tribune in 1888 that there were only, quote, about 400 people in fashionable New York society.
06:17.488 --> 06:22.292
[SPEAKER_01]: You strike people who are either not at ease in a ballroom or else make other people not at ease.
06:23.281 --> 06:24.902
[SPEAKER_01]: So who was in the 400?
06:25.682 --> 06:28.904
[SPEAKER_01]: Ironically, holy around 250 people made the cut.
06:29.544 --> 06:33.006
[SPEAKER_01]: And everyone in New York wanted to know exactly who they were.
06:33.747 --> 06:41.331
[SPEAKER_01]: This knowledge of exactly who these people were on this very elite social registry would remain a mystery for years.
06:42.091 --> 06:46.594
[SPEAKER_01]: But in 1892, the world would find out exactly who the 400 were.
06:47.194 --> 06:50.196
[SPEAKER_01]: And spoiler, these people, her very rich,
06:52.897 --> 06:55.820
[SPEAKER_01]: more after this break.
06:55.880 --> 07:16.698
[SPEAKER_01]: In 1892, as a response to the competing list of suspected 400ers, published in various magazines all around New York, on February 16th, 1892, the New York Times themselves published an official list of the 400 individuals deemed acceptable by Mrs. Aster and her society lackey, Ward McAllister.
07:17.338 --> 07:27.101
[SPEAKER_01]: While the number 400 itself might seem arbitrary, some suggested it was simply because the Aster Ballroom could only hold 400 guests, the list itself was carefully curated.
07:27.621 --> 07:32.943
[SPEAKER_01]: Putting in writing the most rich and powerful people that dominated the upper echelons of New York.
07:33.663 --> 07:50.366
[SPEAKER_01]: The New York Times quoted McAllister in this piece, and in the quote he's talking about other lists and how there are 150 people and inaccurate, I have to say this quote sounds kind of insane and it's very hard for me not to do it in some kind of insane accent, but I won't.
07:51.026 --> 07:51.306
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't.
07:52.406 --> 07:56.907
[SPEAKER_01]: Just saying he does not sound very reliable and certainly not like a 400er.
07:56.927 --> 07:57.187
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's
08:02.768 --> 08:27.289
[SPEAKER_01]: quote let me explain don't you know there are three dinner dances don't you know during the season and the invitations don't you see our issue to different ladies and gentlemen each time do you understand so what each dinner dance you know are only 150 people of the highest set don't you know so during the season you see 400 different invitations are issued wait a moment and I will give you a correct list don't you know of the people who form what is known as the 400
08:28.373 --> 08:33.353
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you understand it will be authorized, reliable, and don't you know, the only correct list?
08:35.147 --> 08:42.091
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd read the whole list to you, perhaps, but we don't have that time, and really you wouldn't recognize most of the names, but a couple you definitely would.
08:42.592 --> 08:46.174
[SPEAKER_01]: The Carnegie's, the DuPont's, and of course, JP Morgan.
08:47.115 --> 08:59.843
[SPEAKER_01]: As you might have guessed from those names, the list had primarily bankers, lawyers, brokers, real estate man, and rail rotors, with one editor, Paul Dana, of the New York Sun, one publisher, one artist, and two architects.
09:00.735 --> 09:08.377
[SPEAKER_01]: It also included a mix of old money and the new Voreesh, whom asked her felt, begrudgingly, were able to partake in polite society.
09:08.877 --> 09:18.819
[SPEAKER_01]: This is best exemplified by the Vanderbilt family, an obscenely rich family who had muscled their way into the 400 by throwing insane parties with money they had made in the railroad.
09:19.199 --> 09:21.880
[SPEAKER_01]: If the storyline seems familiar to you, that makes sense.
09:22.320 --> 09:27.581
[SPEAKER_01]: The gilded age on HBO is basically based off of the Vanderbilt family, and what they
09:31.555 --> 09:47.648
[SPEAKER_01]: After McAllister finally released the names of the 400 to the New York Times, people were curious, but also very pissed, as you might understand, against the idea of a definitive list of acceptable people, and against the character of McAllister himself.
09:48.388 --> 09:55.576
[SPEAKER_01]: Even after giving exclusive take to the New York Times, all the papers called him a tri-hard, a Mr. Make-A-Lister.
09:56.117 --> 10:02.344
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course didn't help that he published a controversial Tel-Al-Memor in 1890, called Society as I have found it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: McAllister, after that point, was ostracized by the very group he helped construct.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Several years later, author O'Henry released a collection of short stories, combating this notion of the 400 entitled the 4 million.
10:17.058 --> 10:24.163
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a reaction to the very idea of the 400, communicating that every human being in New York was worthy of notice.
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[SPEAKER_01]: While class warfare certainly still exists, the 400 reflects an era of extreme wealth and institutionalized exclusivity.
10:33.374 --> 10:45.565
[SPEAKER_01]: As New York grew and continued to diversify on and on and on in so many ways, the idea of the 400 wasn't quite as palatable or palpable as alluring or as mysterious, of course.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But where the list faded and the names on it, we do have to acknowledge that they did leave a legacy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These people on the list, the creators of the list were truly celebrities, legends in America's newly emerging history, and however gross and exclusionary, we have to acknowledge that it did create a new cultural and architectural landscape of New York, establishing development.
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[SPEAKER_01]: cultural philanthropy and institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera, the Waldorf Astoria Wall Street, the 400 basically built up New York for better or for worse.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In 2009, the Museum of the City of New York compiled its own version of the 400 entitled The New York City 400.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Of the 400 movers and shakers who made a difference in the 400 years of New York City since it was established way back in 1609.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It seems as though the memory around the original 400 has softened, and maybe been mostly forgotten.
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[SPEAKER_01]: After Mrs. Aster's death, other people tried to keep the 400 list going, but it did seem to fade into the background, or become at least less important that it once was.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Ironically, or appropriately, Ward McAllister, very publicly exiled from society after the 400s publication, was the only person in the 400 to make the museum's own list.
