As someone who researches a wide variety of topics related to the intersection of art, architecture, and society during America’s Gilded Age, I have come across something that has confused and perplexed the small community of people who read, write, and think about such things. And that is whether the Bar Harbor “cottage” of George Washington Vanderbilt (1862–1914) was named Point d’Acadie or Pointe d’Acadie . Let’s establish at the outset that Vanderbilt himself, along with his landscape architect Frederic
STATUS OF FRENCH AMONG AMERICAN ELITES DURING THE GILDED AGE
During America’s Gilded Age, it was de rigeur for American elites to speak, read, and write French fluently. Home schooling of elite children by private tutors included the French language as one of the “required” subjects. Many elite children and teens of the Gilded Age, like George himself, traveled with their parents throughout Europe and spent long sojourns in Paris, then as now a city hugely popular with American travelers. George’s knowledge of French was excellent and he would have understood the dif