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

Long before Hollywood, America’s celebrities flocked to the Union Square studio of Napoleon Sarony, the most famous photographer of the Gilded Age and a member of the Salmagundi Club. Oscar Wilde, Sarah Bernhardt, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and countless others sat for portraits that became the definitive images by which generations of Americans came to know them.

Drawing on her book Napoleon Sarony’s Living Pictures: The Celebrity Photograph in Gilded Age New York, Dr. Erin Pauwels explores the remarkable career of this eccentric artist and entrepreneur whose theatrical approach to photography transformed portraiture into performance. Through lavish staging, carefully directed poses, and an instinctive understanding of public image, Sarony helped shape the modern celebrity portrait while influencing ideas about fame, artistic identity, branding, and copyright that continue to shape how public figures cultivate their images today.

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

Across four centuries and especially over 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 were all drawn here.

Join us for this special talk with John Strausbaugh, author of The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village. The renowned author will share some of the fascinating stories from the book and celebrate 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 long been derided by some as blight and eyesores, erased by “urban renewal” and overlooked by serious architectural historians. But this essential building block of New York City architecture and design not only embodies generations of immigrant and working-class history and life; in many cases, in spite of the common perception to the contrary, it included florid ornamentation, innovative designs, and nods to both ethnic heritage and the loftiest architectural styles of the day.

In this jointly 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 virtual tour of some of the most interesting and compelling tenements in their neighborhoods, sharing the stories behind them and the work they’ve done to document their histories and fight for their 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 home at 24 East 10th Street. We will hear about his work, legacy, and life in the Village, from co-founding the ACLU to his participation in critical legal cases including the Scopes Monkey Trial and the trials of Sacco and Vanzetti and the Scottsboro Boys.

This is our 29th plaque unveiling. Our plaque program has honored and marked the homes of local figures from Jane Jacobs to James Baldwin; Allen Ginsberg to Charles Mingus; Frank O’Hara to Frank Stella; and Martha Graham to Lorraine Hansberry; as well as historically significant sites such as the former 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 lively talk and exploration of historic preservation in New York City—its achievements, its continuing challenges, and its essential role in protecting the character of Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo.

Berman has led Village Preservation since 2002, spearheading successful efforts to secure landmark designation for more than 1,300 buildings, including groundbreaking designations of LGBTQ+, African American, immigrant, artistic, and countercultural history. A lifelong New Yorker and architectural historian, he has also worked extensively in tenant, housing, and cultural advocacy.

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Survivors of 18th-Century Manhattan

Co-sponsored by the Salmagundi Club

The number of pre- and early post-Revolutionary War structures surviving in Manhattan is surprising to most people, even experts on our city’s history. From a grand country mansion to a farmhouse, taverns, townhouses, churches, and the earliest park in New York City, discover remnants of early New York from one tip of Manhattan to the other.

Enjoy a virtual tour from the comfort of the Salmagundi Club to these landmarks – some of national importance, some unknown, scattered all over Manhattan Island.

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Ninth Annual Village Underground Comedy Night

Our Ninth Annual Comedy Night Fundraiser is back! Join us for this year’s event with emcee James Mattern.

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

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

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Cracks in 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 explanation for the country’s housing affordability crisis rests on three premises: the country faces a severe housing shortage, this shortage is driving up costs, and those cost increases have made housing unaffordable. These premises have become so widely accepted that they have become starting points for policy, rather than theories to evaluate. But what does the evidence actually show?

In Part 5 of Cracks in the YIMBY Consensus, we speak with Kirk McClure of the University of Kansas and Alex Schwartz of The New School about new research that challenges these premises. After looking at housing production, vacancy rates, and household formation across decades and hundreds of metropolitan areas, they find ample reason to question the commonly held housing-shortage assessment. More provocatively, their research shows that even unrealistically steep reductions in market rents and home prices would do surprisingly little to reduce the affordability problem for those who need the help most — a problem ultimately 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 in the dime museums of the Bowery and his ascendancy in the Golden Age of Magic! Marvel at his battles with the Spiritualists! And find out once and for all if spirits do return (as Houdini famously claimed to prove was not the case) with a visit to a site of one of the famous Houdini seances!
 
This 90-minute walking tour takes you through the Village as we trace the history of Houdini and his milieu of dime museums and performance in the Golden Age of Magic. And, in the spirit of Halloween — and the 100th anniversary of Houdini’s own mysterious death — we’ll delve into the world-famous battle of Houdini vs. the Spiritualists and his lasting, complex legacy in the world of the paranormal. 

Tour covers 1.2 miles and lasts approximately 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 talk about Houdini’s rise to fame in New York, including the East Village, while learning wild facts about his life, his place in the history of stage magic alongside other luminaries, and — in honor of the 100th anniversary of his death — Houdini’s meandering detour into the strange worlds of ghosts and Spiritualism, some of which is directly connected to historic sites right here in Greenwich Village. 

Come with a love for the world’s best-known magician, leave with a deeper knowledge of his backstory and his afterlife among the spirits!