What does a room of one’s own look like in the late 1880s? For The Gilded Age’s Bertha Russell, played by Carrie Coon, it’s as ornate as an opera house, as fitted with extra bolts of fabric as a ballgown, and as carefully configured as a stage set.
Besides the fact that it is, actually, a set (and built on a soundstage), Mrs. Russell’s room is representative of one fit for a woman of her stature. “The lady of the house usually has a much, much bigger bedroom than her husband,” production designer Bob Shaw tells ELLE Decor. “They all have a bigger lady’s suite than the husband suite, and they’re huge.” In fact, Mrs. Russell’s was modeled on Alva Vanderbilt’s bedroom at the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island. Built between 1888 and 1892 for her and her husband, William Kissam Vanderbilt, the Marble House is done in the Beaux-Arts style and was designed by Richard Morris Hunt, the era’s star East Coast architect. Considered a «summer cottage,» it is impossibly opulent in every way.
In season 3, we get a longer look into Bertha Russell’s private world. “Like her historical counterpart, Alva Vanderbilt, Bertha would’ve been involved with every level of decision making,” said Carrier Coon during a special, behind-the-scenes segment. Nothing in the household escapes her attention, and nothing, not even the way the gilding is applied in the ballroom, is complete until she’s satisfied. As Bertha puts it: “Nothing is finished until I decide.”
She’s driven, entitled, and fairly arrogant. These qualities have won her a position in society, which is also at the heart of the show’s plot: the old money elite versus the nouveau riche. This season, Mrs. Russell’s strengths become her weaknesses. Without giving too much away: We see a solitary Mrs. Russell in her bedroom, writing at her desk, and staring into a middle distance from her bedside.
Sad though it may be for Bertha Russell, for audiences, it’s a great opportunity to take in her room. Like in the one it’s modeled after (which was lavender, unlike Bertha’s, which is salmon pink), there’s a French Louis XV bed raised off the floor, on a platform, painted and upholstered in velvet. On the walls, fabric is draped, cinched, and swagged. What did it take to get the look? 300 yards of fabric, in fact, says Shaw. “When you wonder why we needed so much fabric: Bertha’s bed has all the swag fabric, and it’s very dense; it’s on the headboard, if you can call it that, and the canopy… Although you only see probably a third of the fabric, it’s all swagged and bunched together.» The trick was finding someone who could accurately recreate the style. “The biggest challenge, actually, was getting the period drapes. There are very few people who understand working with that kind of fabric, and the valances and the swags.”
Most of the furniture in the room is refurbished antique. In the middle of the room is a desk, which faces the bed. “I think the desk itself was one of the rare instances where something was not an antique,” says Shaw. “It was a reproduction piece of furniture that we painted.” Another detail of note: Everything in the room is painted. Even when the crew found a piece that looked otherwise accurate it got a coat of paint to match the rest. “The scenic artists would look at us and say, ‘You really want me to paint over the chestnut? Are you sure?’” says Shaw. And the answer was yes.
While the room was based on Alva Vanderbilt’s, the layout of Mrs. Russell’s room is different. And there’s something important missing: a sink. As Coon said on the HBO special, other “less extravagant” houses of the era would have had sinks in every room. “The Russells have their toilet and bathtub in one modern bathroom,” said Coon, as a signifier of their wealth and modern lifestyle; “I know,” Coon adds, theatrically, “it’s shocking.”
Another technological advance audiences will see the Russell’s show off in season 3: electricity. While a house itself wouldn’t have been lit up just yet, electric bulbs were starting to become a literal party trick for the very rich, who could put a large generator somewhere on the property. “We found some places that made reproduction bulbs,” says Shaw. “Because the original bulbs were much, much bigger than what we have in a household today.”
