Textiles and Dress

Bradley-Martin Ball

The Bradley Martin Ball was a lavish costume ball held at the original Waldorf Hotel in New York City on the night of February 10, 1897. Cornelia Martin, wife of Bradley Martin, organized the ball. In the style of the day, the couple were known as “the Bradley Martins” and Cornelia styled as “Mrs. Bradley Martin” (no hyphen) to distinguish them from other Mr. and Mrs. Martins in polite society, hence the ball became infamous as the Bradley Martin ball. The Bradley Martins spent $369,000 (approximately $14.8 million in 2026 dollars) to throw the ball, while eight hundred socialites spent about $400,000 imitating kings and queens. In newspapers in New York and across the country, preachers and editorial writers argued over the propriety of a party that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars while the country was in the midst of a depression. In the end, the ball was a social triumph but created negative publicity.

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• ▸Disney Princess
• ▸Area codes 440 and 436
• ▸Clothing in Sudan

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.