“A Life in Service” – A Gilded Age Servants Tour at Staatsburgh State Historic Site

Staatsburg, N.Y. (2/6/23) — At the turn of the 20th Century, it took a small army of employees to operate Staatsburgh, the Gilded Age home of Ruth Livingston and Ogden Mills. This winter, Staatsburgh State Historic Site will offer a special 90-minute tour that focuses on the lives and duties of those servants who worked in the mansion – the English butler, the French chefs, and countless maids. The tour, called “A Life in Service,” will show visitors the mansion through the servants' eyes, as they rose before dawn and toiled until after midnight to provide the luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by their employers.

The tour will take place on February 12, 18, 20, 25 and on March 18, 19, 25, 26 at 2:00 p.m. Reservations for “A Life in Service” are required at www.Bookeo.com/StaatsburghSHS. Admission is $10.00; $8.00 for seniors and students; children under 12 are free.

Led by a costumed guide, “A Life in Service” will include visiting additional parts of the mansion not on standard tours, including the unrestored servants’ hall. Even in its unrestored state, this unique area of the house is a striking artifact of servant life, featuring the servants' dining room, the footmen's bedrooms, and the tiled kitchen with its massive coal stove, where Staatsburgh’s French chef prepared gourmet meals for society’s elite.

Servants often worked seventeen-hour days, six and a half days a week, providing all the comforts required by Gilded Age millionaires. They ironed their employers’ shoelaces and newspapers, put toothpaste on their toothbrushes and buttoned their buttons as they dressed. While Staatsburgh’s servants were well-provided for, servants elsewhere sometimes endured grim conditions, eating scanty meals and living in unheated attics. The tour at Staatsburgh will look at the advantages and sacrifices of being a servant, and why the world of master and servant faded away after World War I.

Visitors interested in learning more about Staatsburgh’s servants can visit an exhibit at the site, featuring biographical information about some of the people who worked at the mansion, including the housekeeper, the butler, the chauffeur, and the chef. The exhibit includes hands-on activities, offering the chance to interview for a servant’s job on a touchscreen display or to use a buttonhook to button an old-fashioned shoe. Visitors may also wish to stroll along the Hudson River on the historic grounds of the estate on paved roads, or hike the woodland trails in adjacent Mills and Norrie State Parks.

Staatsburgh was the Gilded Age country home of financer and philanthropist Ogden Mills and his wife, Ruth Livingston Mills, a prominent figure in New York Society. Their stately home, overlooking the Hudson River in the hamlet of Staatsburg, was redesigned and expanded to 79 rooms in 1895 by the famous architect Stanford White.