The date for our much anticipated NYC outing has been set as Thursday, January 22nd! Members (only) are encouraged to join us for a trip to the Museum of the City of New York and catch a glimpse of the visual culture of elite New York in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. After our tour, the group is invited to lunch at the fabulous NYC apartment of Rowayton Gardener Lilly Langotsky. For more details about the Museum and specifics of transport, cost and time, click below.
The Museum was founded in 1923 by Henry Collins Brown, a Scottish-born writer with a vision for a populist approach to the city. It was originally housed in Gracie Mansion, the future residence of the Mayor of New York. Hardinge Scholle succeeded Henry Brown in 1926 and began planning a new home for the Museum. The City offered land on Fifth Avenue on 103rd-104th Streets and construction for Joseph H. Freedlander’s Georgian Colonial-Revival design for the building started in 1929 and was completed in 1932.
During the next few decades, the Museum amassed a considerable collection of exceptional items, including several of Eugene O’Neill’s handwritten manuscripts, a complete room of Duncan Phyfe furniture, 412 glass negatives taken by Jacob Riis and donated by his son, a man’s suit worn to George Washington’s Inaugural Ball, and the Carrie Walter Stettheimer dollhouse, which contains a miniature work by Marcel Duchamp. Today the Museum’s collection contains approximately 750,000 objects, including prints, photographs, decorative arts, costumes, paintings, sculpture, toys, and theatrical memorabilia.
Our chartered bus will leave the Community Center at 8:15 am, with an expected return time of 4 pm. The fee of $50 (payable to Rowayton Gardeners and mailed to Sally Tepas, 8 Barnfield Road, Rowayton, CT 06853) will cover transportation, lunch at Lilly’s and a docent led tour of the “Gilded New York” exhibit at the Museum. If you have any questions, email Sally at sallytepas@gmail.com.