Celebrate Independence Day and the 400th Anniversary of the founding of New York!

Join an exciting 3-day series of expert speakers at Fraunces Tavern Museum!

The Museum will again be participating in cultureNOW's It Happened Here program as part of the United States’ upcoming 250th birthday to celebrate Independence Day and the 400th Anniversary of the founding of New York. Speaker symposiums at the Museum on July 3rd, 4th, and 5th will highlight three different centuries of New York's history. 

Saturday's symposium will explore 19th century New York with guest speakers on topics including the Marquis de Lafayette's return to America early in the century, immigration to New York, and the Gilded Age. This program will feature a lecture by Mike Duncan, one of the foremost history podcasters in the world and the author of Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution. 

In 1824-25, the Marquis de Lafayette toured the United States of America, visiting every state in the union. During that time, he saw what America had become since the War of Independence-reveling in America's accomplishments since the Revolution, but also confronting the work still left to be done. 

During your visit, see the Museum's exhibition Lafayette: A Hero's Return before it closes at the end of September 2025.  

The program will continue with a talk on 19th century immigration to New York City by Robert Snyder, Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus, Rutgers University.

As late as 1835, New York was a city of 200,000 people, only 10 percent of whom were immigrants. By 1860, it was a city of 800,000, that was 47 percent foreign-born. This talk will cover how Irish and German immigrants remade the city, with transforming impacts on both politics and popular culture.

Moving into the Gilded Age, the program with also feature talks by John Tauranac and Mosette Broderick.

John Tauranac writes on New York City’s social- and architectural history, he taught the subject part time for almost forty years at NYU’s School of Continuing & Professional Studies, and he designs maps.
In addition to Scoundrels, his books include Manhattan’s Little Secrets: Uncovering Mysteries in Brick and Mortar, Glass and Stone (Globe Pequot); the three editions of New York From the Air,  with the great aerial photographer, Yann Arthus-Bertrand  (Abrams); The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark (Scribner, St. Martin’s, Cornell), which was given a full-page review by Nathan Glazer in the Sunday New York Times Book Review; Elegant New York (Abbeveille), and; Essential New York (Holt, Rinehart, Winston). He lives with his wife, Jane Bevans, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and in West Cornwall, CT.

Mosette Broderick specializes in 19th and early 20th century American and English architecture, and has been a professor of architectural history and urban issues at New York University since 1989.
Professor Broderick wrote the history portion of the book, The Villard Houses: Life Story of a Landmark, and is also the author of Triumvirate: McKim Mead & White-Art, Architecture, Scandal and class in America’s Gilded Ages, as well as Fifth Avenue: History of America’s Street of Dreams. She has begun a study of the American beach style of the 1880’s popularly known as The Shingle Style. She is also working on the collection of works of art from a Florentine dealer of the late 19th century.
In addition to the above research Professor Broderick is the Director of the London MA Programme in Historical and Sustainable Architecture, as well as the Director of the Urban Design and Architecture Studies program.

More information Here!

Free With Museum Admission
(admission is free for museum members)

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