Dance Halls and Full Dress Balls: Great Lakes in the Gilded Age | North Coast Chronicles

North Coast Chronicles Podcast: Tales from the Great Lakes with host Helen Brohl, swings into Spring with "Dance Halls and Full Dress Balls:  Great Lakes in the Gilded Age.”  The Gilded Age in American history was the short period after the Civil War to just after the turn of the century.  Mr. Bob Tagatz, resident historian from the Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island, Michigan and Ms. Leslie Heinrichs, Archivist for Marcus Corporation, the company that owns the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, share the extraordinary history of these two iconic hotels built in the late 1800's and still operating today. More than places of business and respite, the Grand Hotel and the Pfister tell the story of high society, extraordinary opulence, and the sojourn via trains and boats from big cities which, in many ways, built the foundation of our appreciation of the Great Lakes today.