The setting could be any small village in France: winding lanes filled with teal shuttered cottages, a charming main square with a small school, café and boulangerie, and a church whose bells have beckoned the villagers to Mass for over seven hundred years. The only thing missing are people. We’re […]
The World’s Fairs used to capture the public’s imagination. From the millions who attended such iconic Fairs as the ones held in New York in 1939-40 and 1964-65, to the nostalgia they’re viewed with today, the World’s Fairs were where people could catch glimpses of a better world; seeing such […]
At first, the church looks like a centuries old Gothic ruin: the stained glass windows are missing, as are the roof and spire. Left open to the elements, a fine layer of grass covers the floor where the aisle, pews and pulpit would have once been. You’d think you’d stepped […]
In the Society Archives the other day, we were looking at a map of New York City from 1909, and noticed something unusual. The familiar Avenues ran up and down the island, from 1st to 12th, including some of the most famous streets in the world – Madison, Park, Fifth. […]
This week, we’re setting sail for a little known island, home to an abandoned Civil War prison, and links to the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. Far flung desert islands often capture the imagination as idyllic places to escape to. But there is an island the Gulf of Mexico that is so […]
Most travellers head to the Caribbean in search of a relaxing, tropical paradise. Here at the SGE however, we prefer our island visits to have a touch of danger and adventure! We heard of a small, uninhabited island, home only to ruins once used to quarantine slaves, a forgotten graveyard, […]
The Vanderbilts were once the richest family in America. Bankrolled by Cornelius Vanderbilt’s vast shipping and railroad empire, they spent money in an astonishing fashion during the Gilded Age, until it all disappeared, in what has become known as ‘The Fall of the House of the Vanderbilts’. The most storied […]