In 1888, there were 400 members of the New York aristocracy, stated Ward McAllister, an arbiter of Gilded Age society. Just a decade later, Cornelia Bradley-Martin’s costume ball included 800 professed aristocrats. Five years later, there were 25,000. In In Pursuit of Privilege, Clifton Hood, AB ’76, tells the story of this changing New York aristocracy and how it grew despite efforts to keep out newcomers.
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