Wedding Venues

In our search for historically rich locations to celebrate our wedding, we chose National Arts Club and Brotherhood Synagogue. They both overlook Gramercy Park – the only private park in Manhattan – and the spot where Lorne surprised Ruthie with his marriage proposal. 

The meaningful connections don’t end there.

The National Arts Club was founded more than 125 years ago by the author and poet Charles De Kay, who was also the literary and art critic for The New York Times. Besides members like the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, the painter Frederic Remington and the architect Stanford White, its ranks have included Theodore Roosevelt – whose childhood home is only a few blocks away.

The Brotherhood Synagogue is located in a landmarked building that opened in 1859, and was originally a Quaker meeting house (Ruthie’s maternal great-great grandfather, Thomas Franklin Andrew, was a Quaker minister in North Carolina). Once a stop on the Underground Railroad – a tunnel is still visible today – the now-landmarked building was transformed 50 years ago into a synagogue.