The Gay Nineties is an American nostalgic term and a periodization of the history of the United States referring to the decade of the 1890s.
[1] Novels by authors like Edith Wharton and Booth Tarkington documented the high life of the "old money" families.
By the 1920s, the decade was nostalgically seen as a period of pre-income tax wealth for a newly emergent "society set".
It was also the name of a nostalgic radio program in the 1930s, hosted by a prominent composer of popular songs of the 1890s, Joe Howard, as well as an 1890s-themed New York cafe, "Bill's Gay Nineties", during that same period.
Roger Edens' song "The Gay Nineties" opens a production number spoofing period melodramas in Strike Up the Band, a 1940 MGM film starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.