Past Events

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    New York City's Historic Armories

    September 24, 2015

    Between the Civil War and World War II, New York built the most sophisticated and monumental armories in America for the State National Guard. This collection of fortresses epitomized a new and uniquely American building type and served as models for the nation. The Seventh Regiment Armory was at the forefront of this movement and has been described as the flagship for the new American armory, a model never matched for its grandeur. This lecture will trace the evolution of the armory through local military history and discuss the reasons for the rapid pace of the construction of armories across the five boroughs, focusing on Manhattan and Brooklyn examples, and how those armories were used for training, as clubs, and for social activities. Architectural historian Nancy L. Todd will also examine the 20th-century decline of the armories in our city; what’s been saved and what’s been lost.

    There will be a tour and reception of the historic Seventh Regiment Armory at the conclusion of the lecture. This event is part of Armory Month with the Landmarks 50 Alliance.

    Nancy L. Todd is a lifelong resident of New York’s capital district and an architectural historian who recently retired after 31 years at the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, where she worked to preserve landmarks of the Finger Lakes Region. She is the author of New York’s Historic Armories: An Illustrated History (State University of New York Press, 2006) for which she received the Adjutant General’s Award from the NYS Division of Military and Naval Affairs.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    Louis Comfort Tiffany and Associated Artists Decorate Mark Twain’s House

    October 28, 2015

    Mark Twain and his family moved into their new house in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1874 and lived there until 1891. The years between were filled with endless dinner parties, billiard games, the raising of three daughters, the meteoric rise of Twain’s literary success, and the ascendance of his social standing in the elite Nook Farm neighborhood. In 1881, the family hired Associated Artists, the decorating firm put together by Louis Comfort Tiffany, to redecorate the interior of the house just after the firm finished its work at the Park Avenue Armory. Tracy Brindle, the Mark Twain House’s new curator, will examine Twain’s connections with Tiffany and Associated Artists, including Candace Wheeler, Lockwood de Forest, and Samuel Colman, and the extensive decoration of the house, known by Twain as “the loveliest home that ever was.” The house went through many alterations through the decades, coming close to demolition at one time, and has undergone a series of meticulous restorations since 2003.

    Tracy Brindle is the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Chief Curator at The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. She joined the museum’s staff in April 2015. New to the East Coast, she previously worked as the Collections & Exhibitions Assistant at Midway Village Museum in Rockford, Illinois, a living history museum composed of a group of structures of the Gilded Age. There she was involved in many exhibitions and translated the museum’s collections into compelling local stories as author of an acclaimed museum blog.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    When Iridescence Met Incandescence

    November 18, 2015

    Thomas Edison and Louis Comfort Tiffany—innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs, autodidacts, visionaries, and friends—both loomed large in Gilded Age America. They worked together on the design of the old Lyceum Theatre on Fourth Avenue, the first theater in the world to be fully electrically lit. Their meeting also gave the world the Tiffany lamp. Both men worked on the Seventh Regiment Armory, although at separate times; Tiffany as designer of two rooms in 1880 and later Edison’s company provided electricity to the building in 1897. Join historian Francis Morrone for an illustrated talk on these two creative titans whose backgrounds could not be more dissimilar but whose parallel paths yet converged and lit up the world around them.

    Francis Morrone is an architectural historian and a writer, author of eleven books, including Guide to New York City Urban Landscapes (W.W. Norton, 2013) and, with Henry Hope Reed, The New York Public Library: The Architecture and Decoration of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (W.W. Norton, 2011), as well as architectural guidebooks to Philadelphia and Brooklyn. He was for six and a half years an art and architecture critic for The New York Sun, and his writings appear in many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Daily News, The New Criterion, and Humanities.

  • Malkin Lecture Series

    Holiday Entertaining in the Gilded Age

    December 1, 2015

    Discover the elaborate etiquette and enchanting entertainments of a century ago with vivid descriptions of dinner parties, cotillions, and elegant holiday events that will transport you back in time. The Gilded Age— a time of calling cards, horse-drawn coaches, afternoon tea, formal dinners—a time when even picnics were served on fine china. Learn the popular toasts of the era and when it’s proper to remove your gloves or tip your hat as you play a guessing game on the uses of dozens of unique, but now obsolete objects of the time.

    Francine Segan one of America’s foremost food historians, is a public speaker, author, TV personality, and consultant. She is a noted James Beard-nominated author of six books including her most recent two on Italy, Dolci: Italy’s Sweets and Pasta Modern: New & Inspired Recipes from Italy. She is the host on NYC’s popular i-italy TV series “Americans Who Love Italy,” and also appears on many other programs, including the “Today” show and “The Early Show” and has been featured on numerous specials for PBS, the Food Network, and the History, Sundance, and Discovery channels. She lectures across the USA for the prestigious speakers’ bureau Cassidy & Fishman and is a frequent guest speaker at NYC’s premiere cultural center the 92nd Street Y, Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Smithsonian Institution in DC, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and American Museum of Natural History among others. She recently moderated a panel for the Tribeca Film Festival on food in film.