It's no secret that most New Yorkers are deeply opinionated and happy to share their thoughts about the city with just about anyone, just about anywhere, and just about any time.

There are three particular subjects that seem to come up most often, where to find the very best takeout, thoughts on how best to navigate the subway

from which lines to take to exactly where to stand when the doors open to be closest to the

stairs, and lastly, and perhaps the biggest subject of all, New York real estate. You can have a

pretty in-depth conversation with just about any

New Yorker that you met five minutes ago, no matter how long they've lived in the city, about

where to live, where not to live, and most importantly of all, just how much it's going to cost.

If you polled the most passionate readers of the New York Times,

I bet that most would tell you that they never consider this Sunday New York Times completely read

until they give at least a cursory glance through the real estate section. Well, my listeners,

the New York passion for real

estate is just nothing new. And in the gilded age, as the city was rapidly expanding and moving

quickly up the island of Manhattan, conversations about where to live, why it was desirable to live

in any given location, and how much it was going to cost were constant subjects of

discussion amidst leather chairs and cigar smoke and whiskeys at Delmonico's Bar.

This episode looks at five specific mansions of the Gilded Age, in five specific locations

around the island of Manhattan,

from what we call Midtown today to the Upper West Side along Riverside Drive,

and even up into Harlem, and will end on the Upper East Side.

The stories of these mansions, where they were built, why they were built, and just who lived in them, all encompass what one could say were equal parts, money, and sometimes madness.

As my guest today, returning listener-favorite historian Keith Talion will share that then is now, while it was all about location, location, location,

there was often quite a bit more to the story.

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