Algonquin Round Table History,News Vicious Circle Virtual Tours Begin April 3

Vicious Circle Virtual Tours Begin April 3

The Algonquin Hotel

Algonquin Round Table by Natalie Ascencious

Algonquin Round Table by Natalie Ascencious

I’ve turned the Algonquin Round Table walking tour into a virtual tour. I supply the tour, you can watch with friends and family, and try out your best wisecracks on each other. Plus we can cover a lot more ground together. I’m offering them on Fridays for four weeks, at 2:00 p.m. ET (New York time), which is 11:00 a.m. (Los Angeles), 6:00 p.m. (London), 7:00 p.m. (Paris) but check your time zone for seasonal changes. The tour is 2:00 p.m. in New York City time. Tickets are $10 each and can be purchased in advance here.

The tour will be Friday, April 3, 10, 17 and 24.

The Algonquin Round Table comes alive in the only New York tour devoted to the famed literary group. It met from 1919-1929 and is America’s most well-known group of writers. We will trace the footsteps (from your house) of the legendary wits Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross, Robert Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott, and the rest of the “Vicious Circle.” The tour explore the architectural and historical stories of the buildings and landmarks linked to them.

The tour “begins” and “ends” inside the world-famous Algonquin Hotel, a national literary landmark. This 1-hour tour will visit more than 30 places. Tour Highlights:

• See the Theatre District and the landmark Broadway playhouses;
• Visit the locations of the former speakeasies of Rockefeller Center;
• See where the Round Table lived in Hell’s Kitchen during Prohibition;
• Learn about their 1920s friends such as F. Scott Fitzgerald;
• See where The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue magazines began.

Not only will you get a taste of New York history, but it’s a great way to learn about the past and also see how little has changed over the decades.

The guide is Kevin C. Fitzpatrick. He is the author of The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press), A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York (Roaring Forties Press), and Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide (Lyons Press), among others. He’s president of the Dorothy Parker Society.

Related Post

Donald Ogden Stewart

Donald Ogden Stewart in Hot WaterDonald Ogden Stewart in Hot Water

On This Date October 19, 1942: The FBI file on Donald Ogden Stewart is more than 1,000 pages. I conducted a Freedom of Information request several years ago to get it all. The government kept tabs on him for 30 years. I have some of it in the new book. Of all the Algonquin Round Table members, Stewart paid the biggest price for his political beliefs and convictions.

FBI Page

FBI Page

Video From Talk About Vicious Circle WomenVideo From Talk About Vicious Circle Women

For the centennial of the first meeting of the Algonquin Round Table, author Kevin C. Fitzpatrick presented a brief talk at the Algonquin Hotel. He presented the women of the Vicious Circle–the ones not named Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber. In this talk, learn about Jane Grant, who co-founded The New Yorker; Ruth Hale, who fought to preserve her maiden name after marriage; Neysa McMein, the popular magazine illustrator & artist; Beatrice Kaufman, the editor not ashamed of her husband’s cheating; Margaret Leech, the 2-time Pulitzer Prize winner; and the popular actresses Margalo Gillmore and Peggy Wood, both of whom were onstage for 50 years. Thank you Michele Gouveia for filming this.

For more about this subject, read the 2015 article 6 Women You Didn’t Know Were Members of the Algonquin Round Table.

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun on Actors and VaudevilleHeywood Broun on Actors and Vaudeville

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun


On this day in 1938 Heywood Broun died. Here is a sample of one of his columns. From “It Seems To Me.” He loved vaudeville and the stage.

On Actors

Nothing in the world dies quite as completely as an actor and the greater the actor the more terrifying becomes the sudden transition from radiance to darkness. One day he is there with all his moods and complexities and curious glints of this and that, and the next day there is nothing left but a few wigs and costumes; perhaps a volume of memoirs, and a scrapbook of clippings in which we learn that the dead player was “majestic in presence” that “the poise of his head was stag-like” that he had “a great voice which boomed like a bell,” that he was “regal, subtle, pathetic,” and that “every one who was ever associated with him loved and respected him.”

Ask some veteran theatergoer “What was Booth like as Hamlet?” and he will say “Oh, he was wonderful.” Perhaps the face of the old theatergoer will grow animated and Booth may live again for a moment in his mind, but we who have never seen Booth will never know anything about him. Nobody can recreate and explain the art of a dead actor to the next generation. Even men who do tricks and true magic with words are not adept enough to set down any lasting portrait of an actor on the wing.