Set design or Original Artwork?

Set Design or Original Artwork in “The Gilded Age”
Have you been watching?

If you have been watching HBO’s The Gilded Age, you know that Troy is featured quite prominently in both street scenes and interior scenes. 

In the episode Loading the Long Ladder, we find Marion Brook and Peggy Scott walking into the fashionable Bloomingdales.  In reality they are walking in to the Cannon Building on Monument Square in downtown Troy.  

Exterior of the Cannon Building in Monument Square, Downtown Troy as seen in The Gilded Age.

From 1889 until the early 1980’s it was Sim’s Jewelers. While the fans and other merchandise were brought in for the movie,  the mahogany cabinetry (seen in the screen shot to the right) has been in the building since the time of Sim’s. 

Look carefully over the cabinetry and you will see a mural just below the ceiling.  Those murals were painted by Troy artist Isabel Lusty Sim c.1918 after her marriage to Frederick Sim. 

Isabel had a strong art and music background.  She attended the Emma Willard School and was a student of Samantha Huntley. She won numerous awards for her artwork, at Emma Willard, and the Albany School of  Fine Arts. Her work was exhibited at the Troy Public Library and the Albany Institute of History & Art.

The other landscape painting by Isabel Lusty Sim is in the HCM collection and can be seen below.

Isabel Lusty Sim painting, HCM Collection