What’s Old is New Again – A Focus on 1874 at 92NY

92NY’s New 1874 Series Goes Back in Time – To the Year of Its Founding and The Gilded Age
 
With Lectures on Art, Jewelry, Food and Dining of the Time Period, Late 18^th Century New York, and Baseball 

Available on Roundtable, The Online Learning Platform

The year is 1874. A man named Levi Strauss and his business partner Jacob Davis receive a patent for blue jeans, the first commercial horse-drawn carriage debuts on the streets of Bombay—and in New York, a new community and cultural center is founded – the Young Men’s Hebrew Association – now known as The 92nd Street Y, New York.

To celebrate its 150th anniversary, 92NY’s online learning platform Roundtable offers a new series of lectures centered on that magical year of 1874; the series will explore major movements afoot in America at that time and specific aspects of the Gilded Age – art and museums, food and dining, baseball, jewelry and its social significance – and New York City itself.

The series features several esteemed experts as instructors: acclaimed New Yorker writer and author Adam Gopnik; New York historian and baseball aficionado Francis Morrone; art historian, Pace University professor and author of History of Western Art, Janetta Rebold Benton; culinary historian and author Francine Segan; jewelry historian, author and collector of period jewels, Beth Bernstein; and vintage jewelry expert Elizabeth Doyle.

All lectures are online, and they include opportunities to interact with the instructor and fellow participants. Complete details are below, and they can be found on the Roundtable website, along with instructor bios.

NEW YORK IN THE 1870’S

With Adam Gopnik

Fri, Apr 28, 2:30-3:30 pm, $40 for One Session

“To sing New York demands the soul of a novelist, but perhaps only his soul.” So writes expert Adam Gopnik in his piece “Metropolitan: William Dean Howells and the Novel of New York” for The New Yorker. In the Gilded Age, New York came into its own — and 92NY was founded. You may have gotten a glimpse into the world of the Gilded Age  with the HBO Original show, but this course will dive into Empire City as America broke into a new era of modernity, focusing on the literature that helped guide us into a new national identity. 
 
Gopnik will discuss the writers working at a time when there seemed to have been the conviction that New York had become the capital of the real America, and that New York had, in a way, become America. The writings of Edith Wharton, W. D. Howells, Henry James, and W. E. B. Du Bois, among others, depicts a city of chance, fortune, disorder, and chaos. It is a place where the essential principle of commerce and capitalism makes everything grotesque, but where beauty somehow creeps in. Look at how writers and thinkers at the end of the 1800s made sense of the city as a force of and almost outside nature, a centrifuge of chance and hazard. 

NEW YORK IN 1874: FOOD AND DINING IN THE GILDED AGE — UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS AND OUT 

With Francine Segan

Tue, May 9, 6:30-7:30 pm, $35 for one session

Discover the foods, restaurants, and dining style of NYC in 1874, the year New York City annexed the Bronx, Gertrude Stein was born, and the pressure cooker and English muffins were invented. 
 
While the Gilded Age might be best known for its fashion and art, the food and dining of New York in the 1870s saw the invention of countless foods we still love to this day, as well as establishing some of the most iconic traditions of American dining. This lively presentation explores both the elegant dinner parties of New York City’s elite like the Astors and Vanderbilts, as well as the foods and dining customs of the city’s more than 419,000 immigrants, many who settled in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Learn about the origin of the era’s new food creations like Dr. Brown’s celery soda, pastrami, margarine, Welch’s grape juice, and Philadelphia cream cheese. Hear about the city’s elegant restaurants like Delmonico’s, as well as its many taverns like Pete’s Tavern, opened in 1864, and the city’s oldest, the Fraunces Tavern, which opened in 1762. 

JEWELRY IN THE GILDED AGE: SOCIAL SIGNIFIER IN A TIME OF TRANSITION

With Beth Bernstein and Elizabeth Doyle

Thurs, June 15, 6:30-7:30 pm ET, $35 for one session

In the late 19th century, New York City was changing—the “old money” families, famously coined “the Four Hundred” lived a more subdued lifestyle—with homes that were designed with heirlooms and the stories of their past. They curated their friends, their lifestyles and their fashion and jewelry in a way that was quieter, elegant while the new industrialists who had just made their fortunes were building mansions along 5th Avenue (dubbed Millionaire’s Row) that rivaled the those of European nobility with the most revered architects of the time. 
 
The old money families weren’t ready and resisted the changes that the new money brought with them resulting in rivalries and snubs at parties and outings. The differences between the upper-class society spilled over into fashion and jewelry of the time. This class explores the significance of jewelry at that time, the way design transitioned during the period, and what new trends emerged that remain influential today.  

NEW YORK IN 1874: AMERICA’S PASTIME AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN BASEBALL

With Francis Morrone

Mon, July 10,6:30-7:30 pm ET, $35 for One Session

Baseball is the sport that defines America more than any other, playing a massive role in America’s culture, from protest to celebration. Historian Francis Morrone revisits the landmark moment in time when New York set its sights on becoming the home of a modernized league as well as to some of the first national rivalries.

In this illustrated lecture, with a focus on the 1874 season, learn about these early, raucous days of professional baseball, about Union Grounds on Marcy Avenue, about Albert Spalding pitcher, manager and sporting goods magnate) and New York Mutuals’ star Bobby Mathews (the Max Scherzer of his era), the early days of the New York-Boston rivalry, how the National League was formed – and about what baseball meant to New Yorkers and Americans.  Morrone will also touch on New York’s other team back then – the Brooklyn Atlantics, Hoboken’s Elysian Fields “the mecca of baseball” – and how the game then was both like and unlike (no gloves!) the game of today. 

NEW YORK IN 1874: ART COMES TO NEW YORK IN THE GILDED AGE

With Janetta Rebold Benton

Wed, Sept. 13, 6:30-7:30 pm ET, $35 for One Session

After the tragedies of the Civil War, Americans’ interest in cultural pursuits surged. The wealthy looked to Europe as the model to emulate for elegance and sophistication. The concept of the “Grand Tour” was part of the education for Europe’s elite, and the subject of the American humorist Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad , published to great fanfare in 1869. Along with visits to splendid examples of important architecture, the itinerary included art museums such as the Louvre in Paris and the Uffizi in Florence.  Wealthy New Yorkers, upon returning from these trips, sought to make their own city a world-class mecca for the arts. Major public cultural institutions quickly appeared. The Museum of Natural History began in 1869 – and the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 and opened to the public in 1872.  
 
Today, ranking among the world’s most renowned art museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is unmatched for the scope of its collections. Distinguished Professor of Art History at Pace University and popular 92NY lecturer, Janetta Rebold Benton will elucidate how “the Met” grew to achieve this, discussing the artwork acquired during the Gilded Age, and the artists and patrons that helped create its unrivaled collection when New York City was only a burgeoning capital of the art world. How did this museum and other institutions of the era lead to decades of creating and collecting art in this city?

About The 92nd Street Y, New York:  The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y, New York is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY’s programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit  www.92NY.org.