Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [860]
INCLUSIONS
Upper-class New Yorkers had other settings—boarding schools, country clubs, exclusive resorts, elite universities, and Protestant churches—in which blood and money could forge a common culture. In the 1880s and 1890s, these elite institutions displayed both a new cosmopolitanism and a new parochialism, the first evidenced by a willingness to mix and mingle with provincial and professional elites, the second by the rise of anti-Semitism.
Magnates and Knickerbockers alike sent their sons to exclusive, usually Episcopalian private schools. They didn’t mind that nearly all the influential prep schools of the 1880s and 1890s were more in Boston’s than New York’s cultural orbit. Nor did they object to their sons mixing with wealthy young men, from around the country, who would one day would join with them in owning and managing the corporate economy. Together they learned classics, sports, and social graces, while developing the habits of command and taste for public service that would become the hallmarks of their class.
From boarding school the elite-in-training headed on to college. Columbia remained a patrician citadel, with old-line mercantile supporters like the Lows and Schermerhorns joined by industrialists and financiers, but increasingly both elite branches found the college too parochial. Roosevelts and Fishes, who had for generations sent their sons to Columbia and served as its trustees, now opted for Harvard or Princeton or Yale, and Morgans and Vanderbilts followed in their footsteps.
Like prep schools, colleges brought New Yorkers into fruitful contact with youthful members of the propertied and professional classes from around the nation. Elite scions bonded in Greek-letter fraternities like Delta Kappa Epsilon (both Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan were members). This facilitated formation of “old boy” alumni networks that would help bind together a class capable of withstanding the centrifugal forces of competitive capitalism. Ivy League schools also served as socializing and recruiting grounds for senior subalterns, the managers who would run the banks, mercantile houses, and industrial corporations, along with leading lawyers, architects, and physicians.
An “old girl” network emerged too, as elites, especially affluent professionals, expanded educational opportunities for their daughters. These institutions tended to be closer to home, especially the new primary and secondary schools like Dwight School (1880), Brearley (1884), and Miss Spence’s School for Girls (1892). When Columbia refused to admit females, Barnard College (1889) became the first secular institution in New York City to grant a BA to women.
Ecclesiastically speaking, Episcopalianism remained the favored denomination of both new and old Protestant elites. Henry Codman Potter, who became Episcopal bishop of New York in 1887, was pastor to the smart set and had several relatives on Ward McCallister’s Four Hundred list. He loved officiating at weddings between English aristocrats and the New York rich, and when he traveled to church conventions he rode in J. P. Morgan’s private railroad car. The General Theological Seminary expanded rapidly under Eugene Augustus Hoffman, its dean from 1879. Hoffman, descendent of an old Dutch family and owner of real estate worth millions, was said to be the richest clergyman in the world and was widely known as a sporting parson for his love of shooting and fishing and his active membership in the New York Riding Club.
Many believed that St. Thomas, on Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street, now surpassed Grace Church