The Gilded Age on Syracuse’s James Street

From the 1890s to 1930s, stately mansions lined Syracuse’s James Street, their elegant gardens, architecture, and streetscapes a point of city-wide pride. The Gilded Age on Syracuse’s James Street combines newly published photographs with histories of the mansions and people that once occupied Syracuse’s most fashionable street. More than just beautiful facades, the mansions and people who inhabited them represented the cultural life, political leadership, industrial growth, and social reform that animated Syracuse and the nation during this period of opulence.

Drawing on photos and rich archival material from the Onondaga Historical Association, Dennis Connors assembles an architectural and social history of Gilded Age James Street. These ornate homes were widely admired, drawing visits from Ulysses S. Grant and literary giant Henry James, but by the 1940s, many of the homes were demolished to accommodate post-World War II urban development.

Tracing the origins and reveling in the splendor of these famous homes, The Gilded Age on Syracuse’s James Street offers a rare glimpse back in time to a lost era in Syracuse and American history.

Dennis Connors is the former curator of history and executive director of the Onondaga Historical Association. He is the author of Greater Syracuse: A Twentieth-Century Album and Historic Photos of Syracuse, and has contributed to other works on Syracuse and the Central New York region.

Gregg A. Tripoli is the former executive director of the Onondaga Historical Association.