AHA20 Tours
The Local Arrangements Committee has organized six tours highlighting the historical resources of New York.
Preregistration for tours is highly recommended. Tour tickets are nonrefundable and cannot be exchanged. Tour participants must be registered for the AHA meeting. Log in at historians.org/myaha to add tickets to an existing registration.
Please note: Tour groups will meet at the New York Hilton’s Rhinelander Gallery North. All tours will travel by subway (MTA card provided) via stations requiring stairs; alternate transportation is available upon request. See each tour for more details.
AHA tours will travel by subway. Fares and admission fees are included in the price of the tour. See the tour descriptions for details about the accessibility of each tour site. Please note that most subway stations are accessible only by stairs. Alternate transportation for people with disabilities will be available on request. Contact annualmeeting@historians.org for additional information.
Tour 1: Brooklyn Historical Society: Taking Care of Brooklyn: Stories of Sickness and Heath
Time: Friday, January 3, 10:15 a.m.–1:15 p.m.
Tour leader: Julie Golia, Brooklyn Historical Society
Travel: The museum is a short walk from the Court Street station. See above note on accessiblity.
Limit 20 people. $20 members, $30 nonmembers
This tour of Taking Care of Brooklyn, an acclaimed exhibition at BHS Pierrepont, provides a behind-the-scenes look into how public history is created at the Brooklyn Historical Society. The exhibition explores how centuries of Brooklynites have understood their own health and that of those around them. The exhibition reveals that while sickness is about germs and biology, it is also about housing conditions, access to nutritional food and clean water, inequities and stereotypes, and much more.
Tour 2: Brooklyn Historical Society: Waterfront (SOLD OUT)
Time: Friday, January 3, 10:15 a.m.–1:15 p.m.
Tour leader: Nalleli Guillen, Brooklyn Historical Society
Travel: Attendees will walk from High Street station. See above note on accessiblity.
Limit 20 people. $20 members, $30 nonmembers
Waterfront, an exhibition and multimedia experience located at BHS’s second gallery in the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) neighborhood, brings to life the vibrant history of Brooklyn’s coastline through interwoven stories of workers, industries, activists, innovators, families, neighborhoods, and ecosystems. The exhibition engages with important debates about the shoreline’s future by taking on the waterfront’s most pressing contemporary topics, including sea level rise and gentrification.
Tour 3: Tour of LGBTQ Materials at the Schomburg Center
Time: Friday, January 3, 12:15–3:15 p.m.
Tour leader: Dan Royles, Florida International University
Travel: The library is a 10-minute walk from the 135th Street station. See above note on accessiblity.
Limit 12 people. $20 members, $30 nonmembers
A tour of the LGBTQ materials held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Joint with the Committee on Lebian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History.
Time: Friday, January 3, 2:00–4:00 p.m.
Tour leader: Steven Jaffe, Museum of the City of New York
Travel: The museum is a 10-minute walk from the 103rd Street station. See above note on accessiblity.
Limit 25 people. $20 members, $30 nonmembers
Join curator Steven Jaffe for a tour of City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York. For two centuries, working people’s movements have shaped New York—and vice versa. Some of the nation’s first labor organizations were formed by the city’s artisans in the early 19th century, and some of the foremost labor leaders have been New Yorkers. New waves of workers—women, immigrants, people of color, and the “unskilled”—have repeatedly defined their own movements for a better life and remade city life in ways that affect all. The exhibit traces the social, political, and economic story of these diverse workers and their movements in New York through rare documents, artifacts, and footage, and considers the future of labor in the city.
Tour 5: Highlights of the Center for Women's History at the New-York Historical Society
Time: Saturday, January 4, 10:15 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Tour leaders: Valerie Paley, Center for Women's History, New-York Historical Society and Jeanne Gutierrez, New-York Historical Society
Travel: The museum is a five-minute walk from the 81st Street station. The wheelchair accessible entrance is located at 2 W. 77th Street. See above note on accessiblity.
Limit 20 people. $20 members, $30 nonmembers
The center’s exhibitions, collecting initiatives, public programs, and educational materials explore the lives and legacies of women who have shaped and continue to shape the American experience. Join center director Valerie Paley and curatorial scholar Jeanne Gutierrez on an in-depth exploration of the current exhibitions and installations, featuring a gallery of Tiffany lamps; Women's Voices (a multimedia digital installation that showcases the exceptional and unknown women who left their mark on New York and the nation); and upcoming exhibition Artist in Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde De Neuville. The center’s exhibitions, collecting initiatives, public programs, and educational materials explore the lives and legacies of women who have shaped and continue to shape the American experience.
Each group member will also receive full-day admission to all museum exhibitions and access to the introductory film, New York Story, and the Center for Women's History film We Rise.
Tour 6: Museum of the City of New York: New York at Its Core
Time: Saturday, January 4, 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Tour leader: Lilly Tuttle, Museum of the City of New York
Limit 25 people. $20 members, $30 nonmembers
Travel: The museum is a 10-minute walk from the 103rd Street station. See above note on accessiblity.
What made New York New York? Follow the story of the city’s rise from a striving Dutch village to today’s “Capital of the World,” and consider its future in our changing world, on a tour of New York at Its Core led by curator Lilly Tuttle.
The exhibition begins with the era of Henry Hudson’s voyage into New York Harbor and follows the story of the city as it grew into the nation’s economic and cultural capital. Visitors will encounter more than 200 key objects and images from this period. The exhibition also delves into the 20th century and the cycles of financial growth and crisis that continually reshaped the city’s economic, cultural, and social life, as did the influx of new waves of people from across the country and around the world.