Father is a wealthy, conservative patriarch who owns a successful company that manufactures patriotic goods like American flags and firecrackers. He views himself as an explorer and frequently goes on global expeditions, including a voyage to the Arctic with Robert Peary. He holds traditional views on society and race, preferring order and resisting the rapid changes of the early twentieth century.

Mother lives a comfortable upper-class existence in the New York suburbs. Unlike her husband, she demonstrates a progressive flexibility and an openness to people outside her immediate social sphere. When she discovers an abandoned newborn in her garden, she defies convention by taking in both the infant and the baby's mother, protecting them from legal repercussions.

Mother's Younger Brother works unenthusiastically at Father's patriotic goods company. He lacks direction in his personal life, filling the void with an intense, secretive infatuation with the public figure Evelyn Nesbit. He quietly follows her through the streets of New York, desperately seeking a sense of purpose and romantic fulfillment.

Coalhouse is a professional ragtime pianist working in New York City. He is a proud, impeccably dressed Black man who owns a custom automobile, an extreme rarity that frequently draws hostile attention from white citizens. He routinely visits Mother's home in an attempt to win back the affections of his estranged fiancée, Sarah.

Tateh is a Jewish immigrant striving to survive in the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of New York. He earns a meager living cutting paper silhouettes on the street. Having driven his wife away after she engaged in prostitution to feed them, he is fiercely protective of his daughter and harbors deep resentment toward the capitalist systems exploiting the working class.

Houdini is a world-famous magician and escape artist. Despite his immense success, he is consumed by an intense drive to build a lasting legacy, pushing himself to invent increasingly dangerous and shocking illusions. He holds a deep fascination with modern inventions, particularly aviation.

Evelyn is a widely recognized model and public beauty whose personal life has become a massive tabloid scandal. She is married to the volatile Harry K. Thaw, who murdered the architect Stanford White over his jealousy of White's past relationship with Evelyn. Exhausted by the men who control her, she begins wandering the Lower East Side, developing a fascination with the immigrant working class.

Emma is a highly influential anarchist thinker and speaker who commands attention in New York's radical circles. She views capitalism and traditional marriage as systems of domestic servitude. She runs a political magazine called Mother Earth and frequently organizes support for arrested activists.

The son of Father and Mother, the little boy is highly observant and quietly analytical. He pays close attention to the shifting dynamics of his household and the physical environment around him. He enjoys collecting discarded objects, sensing that the world is in a constant state of transformation.

Tateh's daughter is a quiet, beautiful child who endures extreme poverty in the Lower East Side. She travels with her father as he seeks work, eventually witnessing his involvement in violent labor strikes in Massachusetts.

Sarah is a young Black woman who abandons her newborn in a moment of sheer desperation. After being rescued by Mother, she lives in the upper-class family's home, working as a maid while raising her infant. She stubbornly refuses to see her former partner when he comes calling, holding onto the pain of their past.

Thaw is a dangerously eccentric and wildly jealous man from a wealthy background. He is incarcerated and facing trial for the public murder of Stanford White, an act driven by his violent possessiveness over his wife, Evelyn Nesbit.

Pierpont Morgan is an enormously powerful business tycoon who heads the J.P. Morgan Company. Disgusted by the lack of vision in his wealthy peers, he harbors an intense fascination with Egyptian mythology, secretly believing that he and other industry leaders are reincarnated gods sent to guide humanity.

Conklin is the Fire Chief of the Emerald Isle Fireman Company. Driven by virulent racism, he refuses to accept a Black man owning a luxury vehicle and orchestrates the vandalization of Coalhouse's Model T, setting off a massive chain of retaliatory violence.