Immersive Historical Fiction in the Gilded Age

Did you know that dragonflies (a favorite artistic subject of the Gilded Age) have 30,000 eyes?  Well, they do.  We have … two. And get this:  We humans boast three color-sensing proteins in our eyes (called ‘opsins’) - which allow us to perceive all the various mixes of yellow, blue, and red.  But dragonflies are gifted not with three, nor even four — but as many as seven of these opsins!  Which means, fellow Club members, that dragonflies can see colors that we cannot even imagine.  We don’t have the physical or mental ability! So as temperatures rise and all the millions of creatures emerge from winter to do what they do, when you look at a dragonfly, ask yourself:  What do I look like to him?  I don’t know the answer, but I do know this:  We look a lot different to them than we do to ourselves.

The Machinery & Transportation Building at the Pan-American Exposition, designed in the Spanish Renaissance style by the Buffalo architecture firm of Green & Wicks.  The building occupied four acres, and contained all of the latest examples of American automobiles, railway equipment, and industrial machinery.  The color scheme was a light green, considered a ‘modern’ color in 1901, and like all of the other structures at the Pan (except the New York State Building, now the Buffalo History Museum), the Machinery Building was constructed of an artificial stone material called ‘staff’ – a mix of gypsum, water, and hemp fibers that was cast into molds and then affixed to the frame of the building.  All of these elaborate buildings were made entirely of staff, a temporary material designed to last only a few months.  After the Exposition closed in early November 1901, everything was promptly demolished.  Green & Wicks also designed the clubhouse of the Red Jacket Golf Club, which features in both The Unsealing and A Murder in Ashwood.

Buffalo Brewing Company tip tray, circa 1910.  This tray would have been used for returning change to saloon patrons and then patrons would leave a few coins behind for the bartender or server.  The Buffalo Brewing Company built its large, modern brewery in 1910, difficult timing in that only ten years later, the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment (aka ‘Prohibition’) made the production, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages a federal crime.  In 1910, when concerns about drinking were approaching crisis proportions, American consumption of pure ethanol (the alcoholic component of beer, spirits, and wine, which are predominantly water) was about two gallons per person.  In 2020, it was about 2 ½ gallons per person, a 25% increase.  (The comparison is more than a little woozy, however, because in the early 1900s women tended either to avoid alcoholic beverages entirely, or to partake very sparingly.  Thus the per capita number of two gallons probably represents a far greater consumption of alcohol by each 1910 male than by his 2020 counterpart.  Incidentally, today men still drink, on average, about three times as much alcohol as do women.)  Prohibition movements worldwide were always closely aligned with women’s suffrage (right to vote) movements, and the Nineteenth Amendment (also in 1920) granted American women the right to vote.

The International Traction Company trolley – commonly known as the Yellow Car Line, ran every 15 minutes from Buffalo to Niagara Falls, making the trip to the Falls in a fast 90 minutes for a round-trip fare of $0.50 (about $15-20 in today’s money).  The generally efficient cars were not without risk, however.  On July 4, 1903, a packed Yellow Car on the Lockport route collided with a freight train, killing two passengers and injuring fifty more.  In Robert Brighton’s books, trolleys (streetcars) feature prominently, as they would have done in the daily lives of commuters in the Gilded Age.