Barry Lewis’ “live” tour of this website
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Barry Lewis is available for lectures, conferences, seminars and other types of speaking engagements.

Possible lecture topics
Past speaking engagements

Barry Lewis
Credits: Courtesy of Morgan Library;
photo by Susan Hoehn.

Barry Lewis speaking at the Morgan Library and Museum on Bohemia Before Bob Dylan: Greenwich Village in the 1910s and 20s

Upcoming events for the public:

The Emergence of Yankee Architecture
Historic House Trust New York City
Thurs Feb 26, 2009, 6-8pm
TheTimesCenter Stage
Cocktail reception will precede the presentation

Looking at the collection of houses and properties under the wing of the New York City Parks Department's Historic House Trust, the majority of which were built before 1850, we will explore the issues and questions these houses raise over the emergence of a specific Yankee architecture and its surprising spirit of modernism.

Paradise in New York: Olmsted & Vaux's Parks, Parkways and Garden Suburbs, 1860s/1870s
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thurs April 16, 2009, 6-7p.m.
Metropolitan Museum Auditorium

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, designers of Central Park, envisioned a green framework for the growing metropolis. Parks, parkways and planned communities would combine city life with country pleasures, ideas that today are called "the new urbanism". New York and Brooklyn were where that framework was pioneered. We'll take a look at this template for "green" city planning that even today remains progressive, effective and environmentally friendly.

Paradise in New York-1910 to 1930: Updating the Olmsted and Vaux Vision for the 20th Century
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thurs April 23, 2009, 6-7p.m.
Metropolitan Museum Auditorium

Olmsted and Vaux' vision of a "green city" was carried into the 20th century by builders, architects and utopianists who constructed urban neighborhoods alive with parks, recreational facilities and that precious New York City commodity, open space. We will look at early "new urbanist" neighborhoods Forest Hills Gardens (1910), Jackson Heights (1910) and Sunnyside Gardens (1926), the towering "green" city of Parkchester (1938) and the Robert Moses /Gilmore Clarke parkway system that was meant to link them all together.

Shopping Old New York with Mary Todd Lincoln & Barry Lewis
New-York Historical Society
Thursday, May 7th, 2009 6:30p.m. - 7:30 pm.
Reception to follow lecture.

In conjunction with a Society exhibit, we will peruse New York's mid 19th century luxury shopping district, as Mrs. Lincoln might have, examining a pastime, and for some a passion, that defines the modern era. With the rise of the great department stores and the emergence of a specific "silk stocking" shopping district, our modern middle-class society found one of its favorite indoor activities, buying "stuff" that will tell the world who we are.