By Ellen de Saint Phalle, Member, Board of Directors, The Bronxville Historical Conservancy
Apr. 13, 2016: The Bronxville Historical Conservancy will feature Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and best-selling author Stacy Schiff at the 2016 Annual Brendan Gill Lecture on April 15 at 8:00 pm in Reisinger Auditorium on the campus of Sarah Lawrence College.
Schiff will give a presentation titled "The Salem Witch Trials: What Really Happened and Why It Matters in 21st-Century America." This free program includes a reception with the author immediately following the presentation. Seating is limited; please register at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 914-961-6790.
Schiff is the author of Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), winner of the Pulitzer Prize; Saint-Exupéry, a Pulitzer Prize finalist; and A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, winner of the George Washington Book Prize, the Ambassador Award in American Studies, and the Gilbert Chinard Prize of the Institut Français d’Amérique. All three were New York Times Notable Books; the Los Angeles Times Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, and the Economist also named A Great Improvisation a Best Book of the Year. Cleopatra: A Life was published to great acclaim in 2010.
Her most recent book, The Witches, Salem, 1692, immediately climbed to a number of must-read book lists, including USA Today's Top 10 Books of 2015. “An exhaustively researched, gorgeously written history of the Salem witch trials that unearths what really happened and why it matters in 21st-Century America.” David McCullough proclaimed, “History in the hands of Stacy Schiff is invariably full of life, light, shadow, surprise, clarity of insight, and so it is again, and then some, in her latest work, The Witches. Few writers combine as she does superb scholarship and an exceptional gift for language with amazing reach and agility of mind. This is a superb book.”
Schiff has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities and was a Director’s Fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She was awarded a 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2011 she was named a Library Lion of the New York Public Library.
Now in its eighteenth year, the Brendan Gill Lecture was established as a gift to the larger Bronxville community and is one of the many programs The Bronxville Historical Conservancy offers to increase awareness of the village’s history and appreciation of its rich culture. The event honors former Bronxville resident Brendan Gill, who was called by architecture critic Paul Goldberger "the greatest public citizen of our time in the realm of architecture, planning, and historic preservation."
Previous Gill lecturers include Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Meacham, National Book Award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick, biographer Walter Isaacson, and historians David Halberstam, Harold Holzer, Kenneth Jackson, and David Eisenhower.
Pictured here: Author Stacy Schiff.
Photo courtesy The Bronxville Historical Conservancy
Bronxville is a quaint village (one square mile) located just 16 miles north of midtown Manhattan (roughly 30 minutes on the train) and has a population of approximately 6,500. It is known as a premier community with an excellent public school (K-12) and easy access to Manhattan. Bronxville offers many amenities including an attractive business district, a hospital (Lawrence Hospital), public paddle and tennis courts, fine dining at local restaurants, two private country clubs and a community library.
While the earliest settlers of Bronxville date back to the first half of the 18th century, the history of the modern suburb of Bronxville began in 1890 when William Van Duzer Lawrence purchased a farm and commissioned the architect, William A. Bates, to design a planned community of houses for well-known artists and professionals that became a thriving art colony. This community, now called Lawrence Park, is listed on the National register of Historic Places and many of the homes still have artists’ studios. A neighborhood association within Lawrence Park called “The Hilltop Association” keeps this heritage alive with art shows and other events for neighbors.
Bronxville offers many charming neighborhoods as well as a variety of living options for residents including single family homes, town houses, cooperatives and condominiums. One of the chief benefits of living in “the village” is that your children can attend the Bronxville School.
The Bronxville postal zone (10708, known as “Bronxville PO”) includes the village of Bronxville as well as the Chester Heights section of Eastchester, parts of Tuckahoe and the Lawrence Park West, Cedar Knolls, Armour Villa and Longvale sections of Yonkers. Many of these areas have their own distinct character. For instance, the Armour Villa section has many historic homes and even has its own newsletter called “The Villa Voice” which reports on neighborhood news.
Village of Bronxville Administrative Offices
337-6500
Open 9:00am - 4pm excluding holidays and weekends
Bronxville Police Department
337-0500
Open 24 hours
Bronxville Parking Violations
337-2024
Open 9:00am - 4pm excluding holidays and weekends
Bronxville Fire Deparment
793-6400