About this event During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italian working-class immigrants in the United States staged religious feste (street feasts) in honor of the Madonna and Catholic saints. The feasts’ focus were free-standing, Baroque-style chapels, many reaching four stories high, temporarily erected on city sidewalks to display the image of the feted […]

Thursday, January 20th, 2022 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM   About this event Author Jeffrey I. Richman will tell the captivating story of how a bridge of unprecedented size and technology was built over the East River, connecting, for the first time, the then independent cities of Brooklyn and New York. This awe-inspiring structure—built during […]

Know someone who is working on a neat preservation project? Tell them to apply to the Margot Gayle Fund! The deadline is February 14th.  Please see the Margot Gayle Fund Page on our website for full details on how to apply.

Author Rachel Feltman will talk about her forthcoming book. About this event Roman physicians told female patients they should sneeze out as much semen as possible after intercourse to avoid pregnancy. Historical treatments for erectile dysfunction included goat testicle transplants. Sex has changed in a million ways since Adam and Eve, the original awkward virgins, […]

Wealthy American women—as consumers and as influencers—helped shape French couture of the late nineteenth century. About this event Join us for a conversation with Elizabeth L. Block, PhD, author of Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion (MIT Press). French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic —think […]

The Victorian Society New York invites university student historians and recent graduates to submit proposals by March 14, 2022, for its annual “Emerging Scholars” evening event on May 16, 2022. The nonprofit VSNY, founded in 1966, supports scholarship about every aspect of 19th-century and early-20th-century culture, including architecture, literature, theater, fine and decorative art, immigration, […]

About this event An in-person curator-led tour of a new exhibit at Poster House in Manhattan, Ethel Reed: I Am My Own Property. Angelina Lippert, Poster House's chief curator, will lead attendees through a retrospective of the artist and designer Ethel Reed (1874-1912). In 1895, Reed shot to fame as a fresh talent in the male-dominated […]

In-person Margot Gayle Benefit Tour   This special tour will focus on the Bailey mansion’s ongoing restoration and will be led by the current owners, followed by a toast. Completed in 1888 for the celebrated circus director James A. Bailey of Barnum & Bailey Circus, the striking limestone Bailey mansion was built to impress. Evoking […]

John Stuart Gordon, curator of Yale University Art Gallery's Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power About this event Gold’s warm glow, resistance to corrosion, and rarity have made it a preferred material for objects meant to convey prestige, authority, or devotion. This talk by John Stuart Gordon, curator of Yale University Art Gallery's current show, Gold […]

An African American Innovator in the Old Newspaper Business About this event Victorian New Yorkers and their institutions did not consider old newspapers valuable and did not reliably save them. Researchers and others who needed outdated newspapers and magazines had little chance of finding what they wanted unless they happened to learn of Robert M. […]

Victorian Society New York’s annual Emerging Scholars About this event Winners of the Victorian Society New York’s annual Emerging Scholars contest will speak on a fascinating array of topics. Hannah Morand, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, will analyze a 120-foot-long panoramic painting of a U.S. Army victory at Gettysburg, shown in the […]

  All are welcome at the Victorian Society New York Annual Meeting, Awards Showcase and reception! Tickets include a one-year membership. About this event IN PERSON Presentation & Reception The Church of the Holy Trinity 316 East 88th Street New York, NY 10128 Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 6:30 p.m.- 8:30 p.m.   After a two-year […]

How Women Revolutionized Marriage and Found Freedom on the American Frontier This is an in-person lecture at: Jefferson Market Library 425 6th Avenue New York, NY 10011 For a woman traveling without her husband in the late nineteenth century, there was only one reason to take the train all the way to Sioux Falls, South […]

Macabre scrapbooks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art This is an in-person lecture at: Jefferson Market Library 425 6th Avenue New York, NY 10011 Two macabre scrapbooks preserved in the The Metropolitan Museum of Art are packed with century-old obituaries of artists who died tragically by suicide, foul play, disease, or in bizarre accidents. Jim […]

In Partnership with Friends of the Urban Organ at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral 261 Mott Street, New York Ny Thursday, December 15th 6:30 p.m.- 8:00 p.m. Tickets Here! For Victorian Society Members, be sure to use the promocode: "VICTORIAN" at checkout for 50% off your tickets.  Victorian-era carols, seasonal music and readings […]

Online talk with Tania June Sammons (New Date!) Wednesday, January 4th 6:30 p.m.- 8:00 p.m. Spanning the 19th century, New York’s influence on Savannah reached nearly everyone in the city and surrounding area, including the enslaved men and women whose labor facilitated the cotton industry before the Civil War. However, the physical interaction between the […]

Register for this Online Lecture Here The American Pre-Raphaelites launched the earliest reform movement in the history of American art. Founded in 1863, in the midst of the American Civil War, the movement comprised politically radical, abolitionist artists, joined by like-minded architects, critics, and scientists. In the decade that followed, the American Pre-Raphaelites executed paintings, […]

IN-PERSON Conversation & Tea Reception with host Carl Raymond & Guest Ben Miller at Salmagundi Club 47 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Thursday, February 16th 3:30pm Tickets Here!  Reservations Required. VSNY is pleased to co-sponsor a tea-time conversation with our friends at the Salmagundi Club, The Royal Oak Foundation and The Magazine Antiques. About the […]

Free Cross-Promoted Lecture at the Jefferson Market Library: Register for this event here. This will be an in-person lecture held at: Jefferson Market Library425 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10011 In the years after emancipation (1865), formerly enslaved Americans took out newspaper ads by the thousands, looking for family members and other loved […]

Dr. Tara Green discusses Alice Dunbar-Nelson's early years in New Orleans and Brooklyn from her new book Register for this Online Lecture Here By the time Alice Dunbar-Nelson published her first volume of fiction and poems in 1895, she had begun her career as an English teacher and respectable activist. It was also in that […]