Stepping aboard a 19th-century tall ship docked in Lower Manhattan to discuss Gilded Age serial killers isn't your average Saturday, but then again, the South Street Seaport Museum Book Club isn't your average book club.
I don’t know what y’all are up to over the next few weeks, but I need more people to join me at the South Street Seaport Museum Book Club.
I went to September’s meeting for Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, which sounds, admittedly, dry. But it was fascinating!
Cod have apparently been crazy busy throughout history. Our discussion wandered from the American Revolution to the transatlantic slave trade, the Cod Wars between Iceland and the UK, religion, globalization, climate change, frozen food, and several historical recipes that made me very grateful to live in the era of modern refrigeration and, quite frankly, non-fish-based desserts.
I know NYC book clubs are a dime a dozen. It’s hard to find the right one because you aren’t just looking to read more books (although that’s a perk), you’re looking to share something cool with like-minded people, talk about it, and see how you get on. Honestly, I’ve never attended a book club quite like this. The attendees brought in their own knowledge, debated the weird bits, and connected a book about cod to much bigger historical shifts. Some people even did extra research to share with the group. It was great.
So, obviously, I’m going back.
The next meeting is October 31 at noon for Kate Winkler Dawson’s All That Is Wicked: A Gilded-Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind. It follows Edward Rulloff, a 19th-century murderer once considered “too intelligent to be executed,” and the scientists trying to figure out what was happening inside his head long before “serial killer” was even in the vocabulary. Basically, it's the equivalent of a live NYC true-crime podcast about a Gilded Age psychopath, held aboard the 1885 tall ship Wavertree (weather permitting; don't worry, we are not learning to sail).
It’s free, you don’t have to finish the book to attend, and it’s the ultimate Halloween Saturday activity. On Halloween. On a historic ship. Come on!
Also, and I know this is completely separate from the book club, but it’s really important: GO UPSTAIRS.
The fourth floor of the museum currently holds The Promise of Liberty: Words That Shaped a Nation, and unfortunately, I do mean currently, it closes October 4.
The exhibit features a rare 1776 Dunlap broadside of the Declaration of Independence, one of only 14 surviving copies of the official 1787 printing of the U.S. Constitution, an original Emancipation Proclamation, an advance copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, a first edition of Frederick Douglass’s My Bondage and My Freedom, and historical women’s suffrage artifacts. Original documents we usually only see flattened into textbook photos are just... right there in front of you.
What makes the exhibit so powerful is how it frames these texts. It places the promise of liberty directly alongside the country's foundational contradictions: “All men are created equal” right next to emancipation and women's voting rights. It lauds freedom of the press while acknowledging how that freedom remains under constant threat. It shows what America is, and what it isn’t yet, but could be.
I went upstairs thinking I’d snap a few photos and ended up standing there reading every single panel.
So, consider this two assignments:
Go see The Promise of Liberty at the South Street Seaport Museum before it closes (they really need to extend it).
Read as much, or as little, of All That Is Wicked as you can manage, and come talk about Gilded Age serial killers with me on a massive 19th-century wooden ship on Halloween.
It’s fall, babes. Let’s New York it up.
Fall in New York usually means standard indoor museums and crowded pumpkin patches, but the South Street Seaport Museum is running the coolest autumn lineup in the city. Check this out.