The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century

The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century

Palgrave Studies in CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY Series Editors Anthony J. La Vopa, North Carolina State University. Suzanne Marchand, Louisiana State University. Javed Majeed, Queen Mary, University of London. The Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History series has three primary aims: to close divides between intellectual and cultural approaches, thus bringing them into mutually enriching interactions; to encourage interdisciplinarity in intellectual and cultural history; and to globalize the field, both in geographical scope and in subjects and methods. This series is open to work on a range of modes of intellectual inquiry, including social theory and the social sciences, the natural sciences, economic thought, literature, religion, gender and sexuality, philosophy, political and legal thought, psychology, and music and the arts. It encompasses not just North America but Africa, Asia, Eurasia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. It includes both nationally focused studies and studies of intellectual and cultural exchanges between different nations and regions of the world, and encompasses research monographs, synthetic studies, edited collections, and broad works of reinterpretation. Regardless of methodology or geography, all books in the series are historical in the fundamental sense of undertaking rigorous contextual analysis. Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Indian Mobilities in the West, 1900 1947: Gender, Performance, Embodiment By Shompa Lahiri The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe By Paul Stock Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East By Yaseen Noorani Recovering Bishop Berkeley: Virtue and Society in the Anglo-Irish Context By Scott Breuninger The Reading of Russian Literature in China: A Moral Example and Manual of Practice By Mark Gamsa Rammohun Roy and the Making of Victorian Britain By Lynn Zastoupil Carl Gustav Jung: Avant-Garde Conservative By Jay Sherry Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire By Shaunnagh Dorsett and Ian Hunter, eds. Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India By Jack Harrington The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century By Sven Beckert and Julia B. Rosenbaum, eds. Nature Engaged: Science in Practice from the Renaissance to the Present (forthcoming) By Jessica Riskin and Mario Biagioli, eds. Character, Self, and Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment (forthcoming) By Thomas Ahnert and Susan Manning, eds.

The American Bourgeoisie: Distinction and Identity in the Nineteenth Century Sven Beckert and Julia B. Rosenbaum

THE AMERICAN BOURGEOISIE: DISTINCTION AND IDENTITY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Copyright Sven Beckert and Julia B. Rosenbaum 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-10294-1 All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-28751-2 ISBN 978-0-230-11556-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230115569 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The American bourgeoisie : distinction and identity in the nineteenth century / [edited by] Sven Beckert and Julia Rosenbaum. p. cm. (Palgrave studies in cultural and intellectual history) 1. Middle class United States History 19th century. I. Beckert, Sven, 1965 II. Rosenbaum, Julia B. HT690.U6A46 2010 305.5 5097309034 dc22 2010023204 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2010 10987654321

Contents List of Images Acknowledgments vii ix Introduction 1 Sven Beckert and Julia Rosenbaum Part I Habits and Manners 1 Goodbye to the Marketplace: Food and Exclusivity in Nineteenth-Century New York 11 Anne Mendelson 2 Natural Distinction : The American Bourgeois Search for Distinctive Signs in Europe 27 Maureen E. Montgomery 3 Henry James and the American Evolution of the Snob 45 Alide Cagidemetrio 4 Patina and Persistence: Miniature Patronage and Production in Antebellum Philadelphia 63 Anne Verplanck 5 The Blending and Confusion of Expensiveness and Beauty: Bourgeois Interiors 87 Katherine C. Grier Part II Networks and Institutions 6 Bourgeois Institution Builders: New York in the Nineteenth Century 103 Sven Beckert 7 The Steady Supporters of Order: American Mechanics Institute Fairs as Icons of Bourgeois Culture 119 Ethan Robey 8 A Noble Pursuit?: Bourgeois America s Uses of Lineage 135 Francesca Morgan 9 Elite Women and Class Formation 153 Mary Rech Rockwell 10 Rediscovering the Bourgeoisie: Higher Education and Governing-Class Formation in the United States, 1870 1914 167 Peter Dobkin Hall v

vi Contents Part III The Public Sphere 11 Ordering the Social Sphere: Public Art and Boston s Bourgeoisie 193 Julia B. Rosenbaum 12 The Problem of Chicago 209 Paul DiMaggio 13 Bourgeois Appropriation of Music: Challenging Ethnicity, Class, and Gender 233 Michael Broyles 14 The Birth of the American Art Museum 247 Alan Wallach 15 The Manufactured Patron: Staging Bourgeois Identity through Art Consumption in Postbellum America 257 John Ott List of Contributors 277 Index 279

List of Images 4.1 John Henry Brown, Edward Coles. Watercolor on ivory, 1852. Courtesy Winterthur Museum, Gift of Marie Robbins Barlow, Mary Robbins Lemon, and Edward J. Robbins in memory of Oliver W. Robbins, 2001.43.1 64 4.2 Benjamin Trott, Benjamin Chew Wilcocks. Watercolor on ivory, ca. 1800 10. Courtesy Winterthur Museum, 1955.92 66 4.3 John Henry Brown, Mrs. Edward Coles Sr. (Sally Logan Roberts). Watercolor on ivory, 1855. Courtesy Winterthur Museum, Gift of Marie Robbins Barlow, Mary Robbins Lemon, and Edward J. Robbins in memory of Oliver W. Robbins, 2001.43.2 73 4.4 John Henry Brown, Edward Coles. Photographic emulsion on milk glass, ca. 1864 68. Courtesy Winterthur Museum, Gift of Marie Robbins Barlow, Mary Robbins Lemon, and Edward J. Robbins in memory of Oliver W. Robbins, 2001.43.5 77 7.1 Benjamin J. Harrison, Annual Fair of the American Institute at Niblo s Garden, ca. 1845. Watercolor on paper. Museum of the City of New York, Bequest of Mrs. J. Insley Blair. 121 10.1 Memorial Hall Dining Room (Source: Harvard Yearbook 1904, p. 113) 180 10.2 Harvard-Yale Football Game (Source: Harvard Yearbook 1904, frontispiece) 181 10.3 Harvard Union (Source: Official Guide to Harvard University 1904, p. 143) 182 10.4 Harvard Union Living Room (Source: Harvard Yearbook 1904, p. 96) 183 10.5 Harvard Union Fireplace (Source: Harvard Yearbook 1904, p. 94) 184 11.1 MacMonnies, Frederick (1863 1937). Bacchante and Infant Faun, 1893. Bronze, 1893 94; this case, 1894. 84 29 1 31 1 in. 4 2 (213.4 75.6 80 cm). Gift of Charles F. McKim, 1897 (97.19) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. 194 11.2 Photographer unknown, Bacchante Installed in Courtyard Pool, 1896. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Print Department 195 11.3 Baldwin Coolidge, Boston Public Library, ca. 1896. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library, Print Department 200 11.4 Bacchante Skip Will Be the Rage: The Lame, the Halt, and the Blind Will Make This Their Fad Now That the Statue Has Been Accepted, cartoon from the Boston Journal (18 November 1896). Reproduced in Walter Whitehill, The Vicissitudes of the Bacchante in Boston, New England Quarterly 27 (December 1954). 204 vii

Acknowledgments This volume could not have taken shape without with the initial and generous support of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, the Leiden University Foundation, and the Goethe Institute, Boston. Their funding allowed for a two-day working conference that brought together scholars from across disciplines to present, discuss, and debate aspects of nineteenth-century class formation of the American bourgeoisie. We are particularly grateful to Elizabeth Blackmar, Sarah Burns, Ute Frevert, and Thimo de Nijs, the four moderators who helped make the sessions lively and stimulating conversations. In transforming talks into texts for this collection of essays, we feel fortunate to have worked with a group of contributors as diligent and patient as ours. We thank Robert Johnston and Noam Maggor for their insightful comments on an earlier draft of the introduction. Paul Mathis provided essential research assistance, and in preparing the final manuscript we are indebted to Jesse Halvorsen and Barbara Ross. ix