Where the Millionaires Lived

Every city pushes its seams and expands outward, gobbling up land to satisfy its growing population. So it was with New York City in the 1880's. Manhattan is an island with obvious boundaries. So the initial settlements on its southern tip could only move north. The neighborhoods that started as places for the wealthy to live (around the place that's now the Lower East Side) were a bit boggy and so were abandoned for dryer land up north. After the Civil War the wealthy chose the area around 5th Avenue and the Thirties to build their mansions. This is where the rich live in my novel Masquerade. 

I always enjoy basing a house on a real house, and chose the A.T. Stewart mansion that sat on the northwest corner of 5th Avenue and Thirty-fourth. It took over five years to build and when it was finished in 1869 it had cost $1.5 million. In today's money that's about $37.5 million. Pretty much beyond comprehension!

Doesn't it looks like a library? It was the first residential showplace in NYC and was deemed "palatial". This is the foyer and one of the bedrooms. All rooms shown here were figured into scenes in my novel.

Mrs. Stewart also had her own art gallery. She had a huge collection of artwork—that she mostly kept to herself. The art room was 70' x 30' x 50' tall. She and Mr. Stewart had no children yet lived in this 55-room house. He (like my patriarch, Martin Tremaine) earned his fortune by starting a department store: Stewart's Dry Goods. I'll go through details of stores of the time in a separate post.

An interesting thing about the Stewart mansion is that their neighbor to the south was William B. Astor II and his wife, Caroline, or THE Mrs. Astor. She was the head of New York society and her approval or disdain had the power to make or break people. And yet her house was a fairly simple brownstone. Here's a picture of it in 1897. It's the small building on the right. On the left is the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. It was built by William Waldorf Astor on the site of his family home after he decided to move to England permanently in 1891. It was built in great part to annoy his Aunt Lina who lived next door. A family feud over who was the head of society and all that.

As early as the 1870's, the encroaching commercialization of the area led the social set to move north to Fifth Avenue and the "Fifties" to build their houses. The bigger the better. The upstart Vanderbilt family created mansions that made the Stewart house look like a guest house. Some of these mansions remain--with new uses, but the Stewart mansion was demolished in 1902. Progress, you know.

And what now sits where the Astor brownstone and the old Waldorf-Astoria sat? The Empire State Building.

If you'd like to read more of my Gilded Age novels, try the sequel to Masquerade, called An Unlikely Suitor,  and A Bridal Quilt, which is in the novella anthology A Patchwork Christmas.  //Nancy Moser

Shopping: Paper or Plastic?

In this season of Christmas shopping we are faced with the question: Paper or plastic? Believe it or not, that familiar line has only been around since 1977. But what about when there were no shopping bags. Can you even fathom it?

When I was writing Masquerade which is set in 1886, the story involves a department store. I needed to find out how shoppers got their goods from store to home. Turns out they often had the purchases delivered. In New York City, millions of packages a year. Free delivery became a marketing tool. And small goods were often wrapped in paper and tied. Women had trouble enough getting around town in bustled dresses and intricate hats, much less carrying around a myriad of bags.

So when was the shopping bag invented? Let’s back up. The paper bag was invented in 1852 by Francis Wolle. He and his brother started the Union Paper Bag Machine Company after the Civil War. Yet paper bags were flawed. They were often shaped like envelopes, were made of flimsy paper, had to be pasted together by hand, didn’t collapse and store easily, and their V-shaped bottoms prevented them from standing up on their own. The next improvement came in 1870 when Margaret Knight invented a machine to cut, fold, and paste paper bag bottoms. 

In 1883 Charles Stilwell developed the square-bottom paper bag with another improvement: pleated sides. It was named the S.O.S., or Self-Opening Sack. Hey, I used one of those the other day at the grocery store.

I’m going to digress about Margaret Knight a bit, because she was quite the woman. Over her lifetime Margaret had 90 inventions and 22 patents. She developed her bag-making machine when she was only 33, while working at the paper factory. The first one was out of wood, but then she developed one out of iron. But Charles Annan, a man who was visiting the factory, stole her idea and tried to get a patent on it. Instead of backing down, Margaret filed a patent interference suit against him. She spent $100 a day plus expenses for sixteen days of depositions from herself and other witnesses. Annan’s defense? He claimed that because Margaret was a woman she wasn’t capable of understanding such a complex machine. Margaret’s offense? Her detailed notes, diary entries, and trial and error samples validated her creative process. The court ruled in her favor. "I'm not surprised at what I've done. I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly." Margaret Knight was inducted in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.

Back to the shopping bag—the real ones with handles. You see, people were restricted in how much they could buy because they were limited by what they could carry in a bag held in their arms. In 1912, Minnesota grocer Walter H. Deubner, created a paper bag with a cord running through it for strength. His bag could hold 75 pounds of groceries. He sold the bag for five cents and within three years was selling a million bags a year. That’s a lot of groceries.

Only in the 1930’s were bags given away, and in 1933 they finally—finally—added a handle.  The Smithsonian has 1000 in their collection.  As we all know, bags became a status symbol and a means of advertising.  Who wouldn’t like to carry around a shopping bag from Neiman Marcus or Tiffany? In the latter’s case, a small bag is a good bag.//Nancy Moser

Mozart's Big Sister

Did you know Mozart had an older sister who was just as talented as he was?  But because she was a woman she didn't have a chance to fully utilize her talent.

How sad.

I heard these two facts a few years ago when I was touring Mozart's house in Salzburg, Austria.  Even though I was on tourist overload, I remembered them, and, long story short, ended up writing a biographical novel, Mozart's Sister.

What's a biographical novel--or bio-novel, for short?  In my case, I define them as novels that are factual (as much as I can make them so) but read like a novel.  It's a chance for my ladies-of-history to speak, to tell their life-stories. 


Nannerl Mozart was five years older than her little brother, Wolfgang.  Their father, Leopold, worked for the archbishop in Salzburg, Austria, with the music program at the cathedral. His talent went beyond music, to being able to see talent in others--in his son and daughter.

And so at the age of 5 and 10, Leopold and his wife took their children on a grand musical tour, to Vienna, Paris, London, Holland, Germany... They performed before royalty, in castles and palaces.  Beyond the normal music, they did tricks like playing with a cloth over the keys. The aristocracy of Europe loved them.  Their father readily accepted gifts and payment, though what they'd receive as compensation--and when they'd receive it--was a surprise.

But then . . . they grew.  What was magical as children became less so as adolescents.  Leopold began to lie about their age.  Imagine being a young girl, blossoming into a woman and not being able to take joy in it because because the simple act of growing up annoyed her father and cut into the family income.

While Leopold struggled with money, status, and his own delicate ego, Nannerl was literally left behind.  With money tight, and the children's star waning, their father focused on the son alone.  Even though Nannerl could compose and was an expert at accompanying--without music--there were no women composers, so she was not encouraged.  Women were supposed to take care of the home, get married, and have babies.  He used her talent as long as it made him money, then pushed her aside.


The Mozarts, notice Mrs. Mozart shown in a portrait,
after she died

As for the other woman in the Mozart family? Nannerl and Wolfgang's mother, Maria Anna, was virtually a footnote to history.  She lived, she bore these talented children, but then she died in Paris while being a reluctant chaperone to her teenage son who considered her a bother.

I often think about women in history, and the roles they were forced to play. Not that being a wife and mother isn't admirable (I enjoy both roles!) but to not have any choices . . . that's what I find sad.  Consider your own talents and ambitions.  What if they had no outlet? What if you were discouraged from developing them to their fullest potential?  I wouldn't take that well. Yet if a choice wasn't even an option . . . perhaps it was easier for these women of the past. Their roles were clear.  Today, our roles are the ones that can grow fuzzy and complicated. Perhaps they didn't mind? 

 

Salzburg, Austria

I think it was hard for Nannerl because she was shown the world and was initially encouraged in her music.  To have all that taken from her would be more painful than never having it at all.

And yet, I do believe she found happiness and fulfillment--though not as she expected. Isn't that often the way?  When one door closes we are usually given the chance to find another path toward our purpose.  Rocky roads are not impassable, they just take an extra dose of determination. 

Read Nannerl's life-story in Mozart's Sister available in eBook and print on Amazon. A new Bonus Edition is available, that includes 50 additional pages of Fact or Fiction, explaining more of the history of Nannerl and her family.  Her father insisted that they keep all their correspondence, so I was often able to use their own words in the telling of the story.  How better to hear a family's history? Also included in the Bonus Edition are extensive Discussion Questions for book clubs. Want to read an excerpt? Click HERE.

If you'd like to read about other women-of history, check out my other bio-novels:  Just Jane (Jane Austen), Washington's Lady (Martha Washington), and How Do I Love Thee?  (Elizabeth Barrett Browning.) //Nancy