Photo Credit: flickr.com

Join art historian Sylvia Laudien-Meo to explore the beginnings of German culture in New York City. The East Village was once home to the ever-growing waves of German immigrants who came to settle in the New World in the mid-19th century, making it the third largest German settlement after Berlin and Vienna. Enhancing their neighborhood with beer gardens, gymnastic clubs, singing societies, theaters, and parade grounds, traces of the newcomer’s busy social lives can still be found everywhere, including a modest memorial, a reminder of why it all so suddenly ended one day in 1904, with the General Slocum Disaster. Cost: $20 / $15 Members.