While gilded ceilings and furnishings are coated in gold, appearing shiny and luxurious, they serve as a metaphor for the ...

Through his pioneering use of photography and muckraking prose (most especially in How the Other Half Lives, 1890), Jacob Riis earned fame as a humanitarian in the classic Progressive Era mold. Yet in ...

Photos show how the poor lived in cramped tenements while the rich built multiple mansions. The Gilded Age's wealth inequality eventually led to reforms in the Progressive Era.