Fifth Avenue mansions and the Gilded Age, a few blocks from the Metropolitan Museum
Thirteen walks past what is left of Millionaire's Row, most of it between 70th and 92nd Street. Which houses survive, which you can enter, and the HBO series that brings people here.
Most of Millionaire's Row is gone. The Cornelius Vanderbilt II house at 57th Street came down in 1926 and a department store took its place; the Astor house at 65th Street was torn down about the same time to make room for a synagogue. What survives stands further north, between 70th and 92nd Street, which puts nearly all of it within a few minutes' walk of the Metropolitan Museum. From the Met's steps, the Payne Whitney and Duke houses are four blocks south, the Ukrainian Institute is diagonally across the avenue, and the Carnegie mansion is about ten minutes north, by our estimate.
That is what these thirteen walks show you, mostly from the pavement. A complaint that turns up again and again in reviews of mansion tours is that people expected to go inside. You mostly will not. The houses that still stand are museums, schools, a French embassy office and a cultural institute, and only a few open their doors to someone on a walking tour.
The name comes from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's 1873 novel, and on this stretch of Fifth Avenue it covers roughly four decades of building: the oldest piece in this story is a room decorated in 1881, and the last of the houses in the table below, Otto Kahn's, was finished in 1918.
The walk with 1,417 reviews is the exception to the pavement rule. It starts on the steps of the James B. Duke house at 1 East 78th Street, four blocks south of the museum, and takes its group inside 972 Fifth Avenue, the Payne Whitney house, which also holds the Albertine bookshop. Its route includes the Met and the Neue Galerie as extra-cost stops, and it ends at the Warburg mansion at 92nd Street, now the Jewish Museum. Most of the other popular walks start at Grand Army Plaza, at the south end of the park, and walk north. If you are already at the museum, the table further down shows where each one begins and ends. The cheapest option, a €17.88 self-guided audio walk, runs the other way and finishes at the Met's door, but it is the only one here that cannot be refunded.
A note on names before going further. Millionaire's Row is the old nickname for this stretch of Fifth Avenue. Billionaires' Row is something else: the supertall apartment towers along 57th Street, built a century later.
Bowery Boys Walking Tour: Gilded Age Mansions of Fifth Avenue, 70th to 91st Street
A Bowery Boys guide walks a mile of Fifth Avenue from the Frick to the Carnegie mansion, telling the stories behind each facade. Exteriors only, small bookings.
Central Park and Upper East Side Morning Walk with a Native New Yorker
A native New Yorker leads a 2-3 hour morning walk from Grand Army Plaza to Bethesda Terrace, Belvedere Castle and the townhouses of the Upper East Side.
Central Park to Grand Central: 3-Hour Walking Tour via Fifth Avenue
A licensed guide walks you from Strawberry Fields and Bethesda Fountain down Fifth Avenue to Rockefeller Center and the Grand Central concourse in three hours.
Fifth Avenue Mansions Walking Tour with Top of the Rock Tickets and Optional Beam
City Wonders guide from Grand Army Plaza past Tiffany's and the Ed Sullivan Theater, ending on the Top of the Rock decks. The Beam photo is an optional add-on.
Film and Fiction Walking Tour of Carnegie Hill: Movie Locations on Museum Mile
From the Met steps to the Guggenheim: movie locations from When Harry Met Sally to Men in Black, plus the homes of Salinger, Capote and Jackie Kennedy Onassis.
Gilded Age Mansions Tour: Fifth Avenue's Millionaire Houses, Inside and Out
A two-hour walk past the surviving Fifth Avenue mansions, with access inside some of them and stories of scandal, murder and the architects behind each house.
Gilded Age Self-Guided Audio Tour: Fifth Avenue's Millionaire's Row
TellBetter's 80-minute audio walk with voice actors, from the Metropolitan Club to the Met. Works offline, starts when you like, stays on your phone for life.
Ladies' Mile Walking Tour: Gilded Age Department Stores of New York
Two hours outdoors among the old department stores of Ladies' Mile, now big-box shops, with the stories of Macy, A.T. Stewart and the suffrage movement.
Millionaire's Row Walking Tour: Gilded Age Mansions of Fifth Avenue
Untapped New York walk from the Sherman statue to 79th Street: the footprint of a lost mega-mansion, the Frick story and a bookshop in a Fifth Avenue house.
Private Fifth Avenue Gilded Age Mansions Walk, Plaza Hotel to 92nd Street
Your own guide for up to 15 people, from the Pulitzer Fountain past Mrs. Astor's lost mansion, the Carnegie house and the Warburg mansion at 92nd Street.
Private Gilded Age Mansions Walk on Fifth Avenue with a Local Guide
Your group alone, up to 30 people, with a local guide and earpieces: two hours from the Sherman statue past the Frick and the last Millionaire's Row mansions.
Private Gilded Age Walking Tour of Fifth Avenue: New York High Society
Your own licensed guide and group of up to 15 on a private two-hour walk from Grand Army Plaza up Millionaire's Row to the Cooper Hewitt mansion.
Upper East Side Architecture Walking Tour: Gilded Age Mansions to the Guggenheim
Build Tours reads the Upper East Side building by building, from the Frick mansion and the Met facade to Wright's Guggenheim, with headsets for every guest.
Ratings collected by Viator and Tripadvisor
Which Fifth Avenue mansions are still standing, and which you can enter
This is the table the tour listings do not give you. It covers the surviving houses that the walks in this category pass, from south to north, with the dates and architects from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission's designation reports and the institutions' own pages. The last column is the one that answers the question most people have: can I go in?
| House | Address | Built | Architect | Today | Can you go in? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Henry Clay Frick House | 1 East 70th St | 1913–14 | Carrère & Hastings | The Frick Collection | Yes, as a museum visitor. Open to the public since 1935 |
| James B. Duke House | 1 East 78th St | 1909–12 | Horace Trumbauer | NYU Institute of Fine Arts | A university building; seen from outside |
| Payne Whitney House | 972 Fifth Ave | 1902–06 | McKim, Mead & White | Cultural services of the French Embassy (Villa Albertine) | Yes, the Albertine bookshop |
| Fletcher–Sinclair House | 2 East 79th St | Commissioned 1898 | C.P.H. Gilbert | Ukrainian Institute of America | Depends on its programme |
| Andrew Carnegie Mansion | 2 East 91st St | 1899–1903 | Babb, Cook & Willard | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum | Yes, as a museum visitor |
| Otto Kahn House | 1 East 91st St | 1913–18 | J. Armstrong Stenhouse with C.P.H. Gilbert | Part of the Convent of the Sacred Heart when landmarked | From the street |
| James A. Burden House | 7 East 91st St | 1902–05 | Warren & Wetmore | Part of the Convent of the Sacred Heart when landmarked | From the street |
| Felix Warburg House | 1109 Fifth Ave, at 92nd St | — | — | The Jewish Museum | Yes, as a museum visitor |
Four of the eight can be entered by anyone. Three of those four are museums with their own admission, which the walks here do not include, and the fourth is a bookshop. That explains the gap between what the listings promise and what the reviews report.
Most of the houses on a Gilded Age walk are seen from across the street, and the good tours say so before you book.
The Bowery Boys walk, for one, states plainly that it does not go inside any of the mansions. The Neue Galerie at 86th Street, itself in a Fifth Avenue house, was closed for renovation when we last checked in September 2026, so do not count on a tour stop there including a look inside.
The Frick is the one to plan around. It reopened on 17 April 2025 after a renovation that sent the collection to a temporary home on Madison Avenue from 2021 to 2024, and some pages still describe it as closed. It is not.
Grand Army Plaza, Fifth Avenue at 59th Street
Where most mansion walks begin, and the house that is not there
Seven of the thirteen walks meet at the south end of the park, by the Plaza Hotel and the gilded Sherman statue. It is a good place to start the story, because one of the best-known houses of the era stood a block away. The Cornelius Vanderbilt II house, designed by George B. Post and built in 1883, stood on the north-west corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. It was demolished in 1926, and Bergdorf Goodman now stands on the site.
One piece survived. The house's gate was given to the city when the building came down, and since 1939 it has been the Vanderbilt Gate of the Conservatory Garden, inside Central Park at 105th Street. The Astor mansion at 65th Street went the same way: Temple Emanu-El bought the site in 1925, the house was photographed in 1926 shortly before it was torn down, and the temple was built there from 1927.
Where each walk starts and ends
If you are combining a walk with the Met, the start and end points matter more than the stops, because the museum sits in the middle of the route.
| Walk | Starts | Ends | Goes inside | From |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Most-reviewed mansion walk, 2 hours | 1 East 78th St (Duke House) | 1109 Fifth Ave (Jewish Museum) | 972 Fifth Ave; the Met and Neue Galerie at extra cost | €35.78 |
| Fifth Avenue mansions walk, 2 hours | Sherman statue, Grand Army Plaza | 975 Fifth Ave, across from the Met | Not stated | €34.89 |
| Bowery Boys' mansions walk, 2 hours | Hunt Memorial, Fifth Ave at 70th | 2 East 91st St (Cooper Hewitt) | No, by the operator's own statement | €42.19 |
| Self-guided audio walk, 80 min | Metropolitan Club, East 60th St | The Metropolitan Museum | No | €17.88 |
| Upper East Side architecture, 2 hours | The Frick, Fifth Ave at 70th | Guggenheim, 89th St | No | €52.78 |
| Film and fiction in Carnegie Hill, 2 hours | Steps of the Met, 82nd St | Guggenheim, 89th St | No | €111.81 |
| Private high-society walk, 2 hours | Sherman statue, Grand Army Plaza | Cooper Hewitt, 91st St | No | €156.09 |
| Private mansions walk, 2.5 hours | Pulitzer Fountain, 59th St | Fifth Ave at 92nd (Jewish Museum) | No | €428.23 |
Three other products in this category are not about the houses: a walk round the Ladies' Mile department stores near Union Square, a Midtown walk that ends at Top of the Rock, and a park-and-Midtown walk that ends in Grand Central.
Inside the Metropolitan Museum
A Gilded Age room you can walk into: gallery 742
The Met has a room from one of these houses, and it is open. The Worsham-Rockefeller Dressing Room, gallery 742 in the American Wing, comes from 4 West 54th Street, the home of Arabella Worsham, later the wife of the railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington. She commissioned the decorator George A. Schastey in 1881, and the museum describes the result as a quintessential piece of the Aesthetic movement. The house was later sold to John D. Rockefeller, which is where the second name comes from. Seeing it needs a museum ticket, $30 for adults.
One correction, because the two get confused. The grand staircases in the Charles Engelhard Court nearby, gallery 701, come from Louis Sullivan's Chicago Stock Exchange of 1893, and the loggia beside them from Louis C. Tiffany's Laurelton Hall on Long Island. Both are fine things to see. Neither came from a New York mansion.
The Gilded Age on HBO, and where it is really filmed
Then there is the television series. Julian Fellowes' The Gilded Age returns for its fourth season on Sunday 1 November 2026, at 9 pm Eastern on HBO and streaming on HBO Max, with eight episodes. The third season ran from 22 June to 10 August 2025. At least one walk in this category pitches itself at fans of the show.
None of the listings we read mentions that the show's Fifth Avenue is not Fifth Avenue. The old New York streets are largely the downtown of Troy, up the Hudson, and scenes were filmed in seven Newport mansions, including The Breakers and Marble House. The billiard room of the Russells' New York house is the billiard room at The Breakers. Lyndhurst, Jay Gould's house in Tarrytown, plays Aurora Fane's. A Fifth Avenue walk shows you the real addresses, not the ones on screen.
The epicenter was the city of Troy, its downtown filled with architecture that makes it perfect as a stand-in for the New York City of old.
Fifth Avenue's Gilded Age houses, built and lost
Dates from LPC designation reports, the institutions in the houses and the Met's gallery notes.
The origins
1881
The Worsham dressing room
Arabella Worsham has 4 West 54th Street decorated; the room is now gallery 742 at the Met.
1883
Cornelius Vanderbilt II house
George B. Post's house rises at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.
1898
Fletcher house commissioned
Isaac Fletcher hires C.P.H. Gilbert for 2 East 79th Street, now the Ukrainian Institute.
1899–1903
Carnegie Mansion
Babb, Cook & Willard build Andrew Carnegie's house at 91st Street.
The growth
1902–1906
Payne Whitney House
McKim, Mead & White's house at 972 Fifth Avenue.
1909–1912
James B. Duke House
Horace Trumbauer's house at 1 East 78th Street, modelled on a Bordeaux mansion.
1913–1914
Henry Clay Frick House
Carrère & Hastings build the house at 1 East 70th Street.
1926
Vanderbilt house demolished
The site at 57th Street is sold; Bergdorf Goodman follows.
1935
The Frick opens
Frick's house opens to the public as a museum.
Today
1972
Carnegie house to the Smithsonian
The mansion is transferred and becomes home to Cooper Hewitt.
17 April 2025
The Frick reopens
The collection returns to Fifth Avenue after the renovation.
1 November 2026
The Gilded Age, season four
HBO's drama returns with eight episodes.
Fifth Avenue mansions: questions before you book
Are any Gilded Age mansions on Fifth Avenue still standing?
Yes, mostly between 70th and 92nd Street: the Frick, the Payne Whitney and Duke houses at 78th, the Fletcher–Sinclair house at 79th, the Carnegie, Kahn and Burden houses at 91st and the Warburg house at 92nd. The Vanderbilt house at 57th Street and the Astor house at 65th, further south, were demolished in the mid-1920s.
Can you go inside the mansions on a walking tour?
Rarely. Most walks stay on the pavement, and at least one says so outright. The most-reviewed walk goes inside 972 Fifth Avenue, where the Albertine bookshop is. The Frick, Cooper Hewitt and the Jewish Museum can be visited as museums, on their own tickets.
How far are the mansions from the Metropolitan Museum?
Close. The Payne Whitney and Duke houses are about four blocks south of the Met's steps and the Ukrainian Institute is diagonally across the avenue. By our estimate the Frick is twelve to fifteen minutes' walk south and the Carnegie mansion about ten minutes north.
Is The Gilded Age filmed on Fifth Avenue?
No. Troy, New York, stands in for the old city, and scenes are filmed in Newport mansions such as The Breakers. Season four starts on HBO on Sunday 1 November 2026.
Is Millionaire's Row the same as Billionaires' Row?
No. Millionaire's Row is the old name for the mansion stretch of Fifth Avenue along Central Park. Billionaires' Row refers to the modern supertall towers on and around 57th Street.
Which walk ends closest to the Met?
The self-guided audio walk ends at the museum itself, and a two-hour guided walk from Grand Army Plaza ends at 975 Fifth Avenue, across the street at 79th. One walk starts on the Met's steps and heads north to the Guggenheim.
Across the avenue: Central Park walks from the museum
Bethesda, Bow Bridge and the obelisk behind the Met, the nineteen park walks compared, and the months when walking is pleasant.
Data verified on. Houses: LPC reports and the institutions. Room 742: the Met's gallery notes. HBO dates: Deadline. Filming: Newport Mansions, I LOVE NY.