American Experience (1988)

Season 12: Episode 3

"Sunshine and Shadow: 1865-1898" During the Gilded Age, New York "was home to the greatest concentration of wealth in human history," says narrator David Ogden Stiers. And, he adds, "the greatest concentration of poverty." This episode surveys that dichotomy, from Fifth Avenue mansions to slums documented by Jacob Riis in "How the Other Half Lives." Also recalled: the fall of William H. "Boss" Tweed ("he took a fall for the system," claims Pete Hamill).