2024 Past Programs

JANUARY

Monday, January 1, 2024
On YouTube!
Celebrating New Year’s Day 2024 with the Tredwells

Paying social calls on friends and family on the first day of the new year was one of Old New York’s most cherished customs. Join us – virtually – for good cheer to toast the New Year and learn how New Yorkers like the Tredwells celebrated the day.

In this immersive video experience, we’ll go back in time to the mid-19th century to meet the Tredwells and hear how they’ve been decking the house for New Year’s Day and preparing their lists of social calls. Join us as we continue the 19th century tradition of renewing, reviving, and reaffirming friendships that last the whole year through. Watch on YouTube.

Open through Sunday, January 7
Special Holiday Exhibition –
Christmas Comes to Old New York

In the early 19th century, Christmas, as we know it, had not yet been invented. Most New Yorkers did their celebrating on January 1, continuing the Old Dutch tradition of making New Year’s Day calls on friends and neighbors. Over the next fifty years, new traditions took hold: from Santa Claus, stockings, and presents; to holiday feasting; to Christmas trees decorated with lights and ornaments; to holly and evergreen garlands decking the halls; to Christmas songs and carols. Many of these traditions were popularized right here in New York City, and quickly spread throughout the country.

Journey back in time to the 1850s and join the Tredwells for Christmas in Old New York. The house is decorated with swags of evergreens, brilliant holly berries, white mistletoe, and red-leafed poinsettias, as the family prepares for the season. Also on display, a selection of holiday gifts from the Tredwell collection.

Wednesday, January 17, 6 p.m.
Edgar Allan Poe: the Man, the Mystery, the Legend!
Virtual Talk
Co-Sponsored by Village Preservation
In celebration and observance of his birthday on January 19 (his 215th), join thanatologist Matilda Garrido and Poe expert Andrea Janes (virtually!) for a deep dive into Poe’s early life and evolution as a writer, his time in New York, when he lived just steps from the Tredwells, and his mysterious death in Baltimore. A Q&A follows the talk. Free (suggested donation $10).

Andrea Janes is the owner and founder of Boroughs of the Dead and the co-author of A Haunted History of Invisible Women. She has also written the YA novel Glamour and several short stories. She lives in Brooklyn, where she can usually be found roaming in a cemetery, swimming in the ocean, or telling ghost stories to her daughter. Visit her online at www.andreajanes.com

Matilda Garrido is a certified thanatologist (Association for Death Education and Counseling) and holds master’s degrees in thanatology and bioethics. She has extensive experience working with the dying, families of the dying, and the bereaved. Matilda is focused on normalizing the experience of grief and reducing death fears through education, action, and increased community support for the dying and grieving. She enthusiastically supports the mission of the Merchant’s House Museum, including its exploration of 19th century death practices and contemporary death education.

 

Friday, January 19, 6:30 p.m.
Celebrating Poe’s Birthday: Poetry Reading with John Kevin Jones 
Virtual Program
Join us, virtually, in celebration of Edgar Allan Poe’s 215th birthday, when the masterful John Kevin Jones takes on the 19th century master of horror, performing Annabelle Lee and The Raven, as Poe himself did at the literary salons of the period. We’ll also present a preview of Killing an Evening with Edgar Allan Poe: Murder at the Merchant’s House, which will return to the Merchant’s House later this year. A live Q&A with Mr. Jones follows the performance. It will be a bone-chilling evening of irrational revenge, obsession and premeditated murder, dismemberment, and the very, very dark. 60 minutes. Free (suggested donation $10).

 

FEBRUARY

Through Wednesday, February 21
Love in the Parlors:
A Virtual Valentine in Concert
In this virtual concert, the renowned Bond Street Euterpean Singing Society presents lush, romantic vocal music, performed in the Museum’s authentic Greek Revival double parlor. Singers Anthony Bellov, Amy Gluck, Jane Elizabeth Rady, and Dayle Vander Sande perform rarely heard gems by the world’s greatest 19th-century composers, including Beethoven, Liszt, Richard Strauss, Amy Beach, Johann Strauss II, and others. Selected as a Top Pick for Valentine’s Day: NBC Online and TimeOut NY.
$15, $10 MHM Members.

This is a VIRTUAL performance. After purchasing your ticket, you will receive a downloadable PDF with viewing instructions. The concert will be available for unlimited viewing through February 21.

 

SPECIAL EXHIBITION OPENS Thursday, February 22, through Sunday, May 25
Tiny Beautiful Things: Baby and Children’s Clothing from the Tredwell Collection
Seabury and Eliza Tredwell had eight children and six grandchildren. On display, a selection of baby and children’s garments and accessories spanning the 19th century – including dresses, coats, bonnets, gloves, and three never-before-seen embroidered baptismal gowns. During the 19th century, Victorian ideals transformed childhood into a time of innocence, play, and purity, a view often limited, in practice, to middle-and upper-class families. The Tredwell children’s clothing offers a unique window into their lives here at the Merchant’s House. Included with museum admission.

 

Friday, February 23, 6:30 p.m.
(Rescheduled from January)
In the Spirit of Science: What’s a Paranormal Investigation All About??
Virtual Program
What exactly goes on during a paranormal investigation? How long does it take, what equipment is used, and what can we hope to realistically discover? Dan, Matilda, and Dr. Lee will discuss past paranormal investigations and what temperature fluctuations, unusual sounds, and visual anomalies might tell us about spirits in a home. What exactly can be considered “proof” of ghosts or spirits? Will we ever be able to prove definitively that ghosts exist and hauntings are real? Join us for an exploration into the scientific method of paranormal investigation.
Free (suggested donation $10).

In the Spirit of Science is a monthly video podcast on topics related to ongoing paranormal research at the Merchant’s House. Using the scientific method, with unbiased observation and systematic experimentation, this research is building a better understanding of the strange and fascinating phenomena experienced by staff, volunteers, and visitors at “Manhattan’s Most Haunted House” (The New York Times).

The research project and monthly virtual programs are led by neuroscientist Dr. Lee, thanatologist and MHM volunteer Matilda Garrido, and Dan Sturges, founder of Sturges Paranormal, who appears on the Travel Channel’s weekly series, Paranormal Caught on Camera.

 

NEW VIRTUAL PROGRAM SERIES!
Wednesday, February 28, 6 p.m.
“ASK A … ” Funeral Director: Amy Cunningham
Virtual Program

Death and mourning were pervasive and integral parts of life in the 19th century. In the 20th century, with advances in medical care and changes in the industry around death and dying, the end of life moved from the home to hospitals, causing many customs of dying and bereavement to disappear. Today, many of these 19th century customs are making a resurgence.

Join thanatologist Matilda Garrido for interactive interviews with those working today in the field of death and dying. Bring your questions and be part of a larger conversation as we explore death and celebrate life.

Although the funeral industry has evolved and changed dramatically from its rise in the 19th century, we are seeing an increased interest in returning to the practice of home funerals. In February’s “Ask A…” program, home and green funeral director Amy Cunningham will speak with Matilda about the current state of the funeral industry, thoughtfully planning your own funeral, and ecologically-friendly options that are in development.  Free (suggested donation $10).

Amy Cunningham‘s thirty-year career in magazine journalism took an abrupt turn in 2009 when her elderly father’s memorial event in South Carolina opened her up to the healing power and magnificence of end-of-life experiences and funerals.  She attended mortuary school in her mid-fifties and became a New York licensed funeral director in 2012. Her well-respected blog TheInspiredFuneral.com and her earth-friendly company, Fitting Tribute Funeral Services, have contributed to the changing landscape of the funeral industry. When not directing funerals, she teaches end-of-life experience design, funeral planning, and the greening of the funeral business at Green-Wood Cemetery and the NY Open Center/One Spirit Learning Alliance where she is on the faculty of the  Integrative Thanatology Death Education Counselor Program.

Next Up: Wednesday, March 27, 6:30 p.m. “ASK A …” Death Doula

MARCH

Thursday, March 7, 6 p.m.
The Peculiar Story of Doesticks and the Fortunetellers
In-person Illustrated Talk with Author Marie Carter
Co-sponsored by Village Preservation, Salmagundi Club, and the Victorian Society
Meet Q.K. Philander Doesticks, P.B. (real name: Mortimer Thomson), a reporter for The New-York Tribune, who in 1857 investigated the fortune tellers of the Lower East Side, and eventually wrote a book about them titled The Witches of New York. When his articles were published in book form in 1858, they catalyzed a series of arrests that both scandalized and delighted the public. But Mortimer was guarding some secrets of his own, and in many ways his own life paralleled the lives of the women he both visited and vilified.

This talk, in celebration of the release of Marie Carter’s book, Mortimer & the Witches: A Nineteenth-Century History of Fortune Telling from Fordham University Press, leads us into the world of Doesticks who hobnobbed with literary luminaries of his time including Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, the wildly-popular columnist Fanny Fern, and biographer James Parton. It will also examine some of the stories of those supposedly “evil” fortune tellers who showed up in the press in surprising ways. Free (registration required).

Event location: Rockwell Gallery at Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue (at 12th Street).

Marie Carter is a New York City-based writer and tour guide who hails from Scotland. She is a tour guide with Boroughs of the Dead, a NYC walking tour company that specializes in macabre, strange, and ghostly histories. Her most recent book, Mortimer and the Witches, will be published by Fordham University Press in March 2024. She is also the author of The Trapeze Diaries and Holly’s Hurricane, a historical novel set in the future. www.mariewritesandedits.com

Sunday, March 10 & March 24, 1:30 p.m.
Walking Tour: The Tredwells’ World of 19th Century Noho
(Second & Fourth Sunday of each month)
With the 1825 opening of the Erie Canal, the city’s economy boomed and wealthy merchant families escaped the increasing noise, congestion, and commercialization of the seaport area to move “uptown,” to what is now modern day NoHo, then an exclusive residential enclave. Join us as we explore the Tredwells’ elite neighborhood and discover what life was like for the wealthy merchant class in the mid-19th century. $20; MHM Members Free

Walking tours are 90 minutes and meet outside the Merchant’s House.