The Gilded Age
By Chris and Aaron
Definition
The gilded age was an era of enormous growth, especially in the north and east. It started in April 1865, and ended around the start of them 1900s.
People involved:
- Mark Twain
- Charles Dudley Warner
- Samuel Gompers
- Eugene Debs
- Cornelius Vanderbilt
- John D Rockefeller
- Andrew Mellon
- Andrew Carnegie
Detail
During the 1870s and 1880s, the U.S. economy rose at the fastest rate in its history, with real wages, wealth, GDP, and capital formation all increasing rapidly. As a result of increasing demand for unskilled workers, most European immigrants went to mill towns, mining camps and industrial cities. New York, Philadelphia and especially Chicago saw rapid growth. Louis Sullivan became a noted architect using steel frames to construct skyscrapers for the first time while pioneering the idea of "form follows function". Chicago became the center of the skyscraper craze, starting with the ten-story Home Insurance Building in 1884–1885 by William Le Baron Jenney.