October 2026 Packages: Photography, Revolution, a New Historic Plaque, and More

Napoleon Sarony: Celebrity Photographer of the Gilded Age, with Dr. Erin Pauwels

Long earlier than Hollywood, America’s celebrities flocked to the Union Square studio of Napoleon Sarony, probably the most well-known photographer of the Gilded Age and a member of the Salmagundi Club. Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and numerous others sat for portraits that grew to become the definitive photographs by which generations of Americans got here to know them.

Drawing on her e-book Napoleon Sarony’s Living Pictures: The Celebrity Photograph in Gilded Age New York, Dr. Erin Pauwels explores the outstanding profession of this eccentric artist and entrepreneur whose theatrical strategy to pictures remodeled portraiture into efficiency. Through lavish staging, rigorously directed poses, and an instinctive understanding of public picture, Sarony helped form the trendy movie star portrait whereas influencing concepts about fame, creative id, branding, and copyright that proceed to form how public figures domesticate their photographs at this time.

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Celebrating the Revolutionary Village: 250 Years and More of Greenwich Village

Across 4 centuries and particularly during the last 250 years, Greenwich Village has been a magnet for misfits and refuge for outsiders. Blacks, Italians and Irish, artists, anarchists and communists, gays and lesbians, intellectuals, eccentrics, visionaries and life’s adventurers have been all drawn right here.

Join us for this particular speak with John Strausbaugh, creator of The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village. The famend creator will share among the fascinating tales from the e-book and have fun 250 years of this Revolutionary Village.

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Downtown and Uptown: How The Tenements of Lower Manhattan and Yorkville Redefined Affordable Housing in New York

Co-sponsored by Friends of the Upper East Side

Tenements have lengthy been derided by some as blight and eyesores, erased by “urban renewal” and ignored by severe architectural historians. But this important constructing block of New York City structure and design not solely embodies generations of immigrant and working-class historical past and life; in lots of instances, regardless of the widespread notion on the contrary, it included florid ornamentation, modern designs, and nods to each ethnic heritage and the loftiest architectural types of the day.

In this collectively sponsored program, Village Preservation’s Executive Director Andrew Berman and Friends of the Upper East Side’s historian and researcher Lucie Levine will take you on a digital tour of among the most attention-grabbing and compelling tenements of their neighborhoods, sharing the tales behind them and the work they’ve accomplished to doc their histories and battle for his or her preservation. 

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Plaque Unveiling: Arthur Garfield Hays

Join us for the ceremonial unveiling of a plaque honoring lawyer and civil liberties champion Arthur Garfield Hays at his former residence at 24 East tenth Street. We will hear about his work, legacy, and life within the Village, from co-founding the ACLU to his participation in important authorized instances together with the Scopes Monkey Trial and the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti and the Scottsboro Boys.

This is our twenty ninth plaque unveiling. Our plaque program has honored and marked the houses of native figures from Jane Jacobs to James Baldwin; Allen Ginsberg to Charles Mingus; Frank O’Hara to Frank Stella; and Martha Graham to Lorraine Hansberry; in addition to traditionally vital websites equivalent to the previous NAACP headquarters, Julius’ Bar, and the Fillmore East.

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Coffee House After Hours: Interview with Andrew Berman by Carl Raymond

Co-sponsored by the Coffee House Club and the Salmagundi Club

Join the Coffee House and Village Preservation in welcoming Village Preservation Executive Director Andrew Berman with the Gilded Gentleman, Carl Raymond for a vigorous speak and exploration of historic preservation in New York City—its achievements, its persevering with challenges, and its important position in defending the character of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.

Berman has led Village Preservation since 2002, spearheading profitable efforts to safe landmark designation for greater than 1,300 buildings, together with groundbreaking designations of LGBTQ+, African American, immigrant, creative, and countercultural historical past. A lifelong New Yorker and architectural historian, he has additionally labored extensively in tenant, housing, and cultural advocacy.

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Survivors of 18th-Century Manhattan

Co-sponsored by the Salmagundi Club

The variety of pre- and early post-Revolutionary War constructions surviving in Manhattan is shocking to most individuals, even consultants on our metropolis’s historical past. From a grand nation mansion to a farmhouse, taverns, townhouses, church buildings, and the earliest park in New York City, uncover remnants of early New York from one tip of Manhattan to the opposite.

Enjoy a digital tour from the consolation of the Salmagundi Club to those landmarks – a few of nationwide significance, some unknown, scattered throughout Manhattan Island.

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Ninth Annual Village Underground Comedy Night

Our Ninth Annual Comedy Night Fundraiser is again! Join us for this yr’s occasion with emcee James Mattern.

This yr’s lineup is in formation, however 2025 comics included Tommy Brennan, Hanna Dickinson, Simeon Goodson, Michael Rowland, and Gary Simons

Tickets are $45, plus a two-item minimal. All proceeds help Village Preservation and its work.

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Cracks within the YIMBY Consensus Part 5: Affordable to Whom? Why Big Increases in Market Rate Housing Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis

Co-sponsored by the City Club of New York and CNU NYC. 

The YIMBY rationalization for the nation’s housing affordability disaster rests on three premises: the nation faces a extreme housing scarcity, this scarcity is driving up prices, and people price will increase have made housing unaffordable. These premises have turn into so broadly accepted that they’ve turn into beginning factors for coverage, moderately than theories to judge. But what does the proof really present?

In Part 5 of Cracks within the YIMBY Consensus, we communicate with Kirk McClure of the University of Kansas and Alex Schwartz of The New School about new analysis that challenges these premises. After taking a look at housing manufacturing, emptiness charges, and family formation throughout a long time and tons of of metropolitan areas, they discover ample cause to query the generally held housing-shortage evaluation. More provocatively, their analysis reveals that even unrealistically steep reductions in market rents and residential costs would do surprisingly little to cut back the affordability downside for many who want the assistance most — an issue finally rooted in wage stagnation and inequality.

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Houdini in Greenwich Village: Dime Museums, Spiritualists & Seances

Co-sponsored by Boroughs of the Dead

Discover Houdini’s roots within the dime museums of the Bowery and his ascendancy within the Golden Age of Magic! Marvel at his battles with the Spiritualists! And discover out as soon as and for all if spirits do return (as Houdini famously claimed to show was not the case) with a go to to a web site of one of many well-known Houdini seances!
 
This 90-minute strolling tour takes you thru the Village as we hint the historical past of Houdini and his milieu of dime museums and efficiency within the Golden Age of Magic. And, within the spirit of Halloween — and the one centesimal anniversary of Houdini’s personal mysterious dying — we’ll delve into the world-famous battle of Houdini vs. the Spiritualists and his lasting, advanced legacy on the earth of the paranormal. 

Tour covers 1.2 miles and lasts roughly 90 minutes

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Houdini Among the Villagers: The Magician’s Life and Afterlife in Greenwich Village

Co-sponsored by Boroughs of the Dead

On this panel we’ll discuss Houdini’s rise to fame in New York, together with the East Village, whereas studying wild info about his life, his place within the historical past of stage magic alongside different luminaries, and — in honor of the one centesimal anniversary of his dying — Houdini’s meandering detour into the unusual worlds of ghosts and Spiritualism, a few of which is straight related to historic websites proper right here in Greenwich Village. 

Come with a love for the world’s best-known magician, go away with a deeper information of his backstory and his afterlife among the many spirits!