Internal Affairs: Events That Explore Historic Interiors

By Troy Segal

Get to know significant houses and buildings from the inside out, with these tours and lectures about places that play a key role in the history of NYC.

From a 1799 carriage house to an 1826 hotel to the 1939 Abigail Adams Smith House museum, the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden has come a long way, baby. Join a curator on an exploration of this stone mansion, located just blocks from Midtown Manhattan, Sept. 4.

Before he moved to Washington to serve an unprecedented three Presidential terms, Franklin Roosevelt lived in an Upper East Side double townhouse with wife Eleanor, their five kids and his mother. Current owner Hunter College has carefully restored the building, and you can tour its memorabilia-filled spaces on select Saturdays, Sept. 6-Oct. 25.

When you’ve got an 80-something Colonial Revival building full of precious artifacts, expanding can be a tricky prospect. Find out how the Museum of the City of New York did it, on a guided tour of its new and improved premises, with one of the architects involved, Oct. 11.

Visiting the Merchant’s House Museum, an 1832 townhouse owned by one family for over a century is always a time trip; but around Halloween, you can get a candlelit ghost tour of its Greek Revival period rooms — complete with creaking floorboards, mysterious voices and strange shadows — Oct. 24-30.

It’s been home to poets and rock stars, been the site of scandals and celebrations. Since it’s currently closed to visitors, you can’t check into the Chelsea Hotel in person, but writer Sherill Tippins — who’s written a whole book on the place — takes you on detailed virtual journey inside its walls, at the 92nd Street Y, Nov. 7.