Landmarks/Sites

Our itinerary takes us to landmark Lyceum sites.

Asa Waters Mansion

The first Lyceum program was presented in Milbury, Massachusetts in 1828. We will return to Milbury, to the Asa Waters mansion, site of early Lyceum gatherings, to hear a lecture on the history of the Lyceum movement and a lecture on the oratory of the Lyceum.
Asa Waters Mansion

Concord Massachusetts

We will then visit perhaps the most important Lyceum site, Concord, Massachusetts, for lectures and interpretations of orations by Emerson, Thoreau, and Phillips at the Concord Lyceum, specifically the Masonic Temple and the First Parish Unitarian Church, and for study and research at the Concord Library and Concord Museum archives.
First Parish Church

Mechanics Hall

Our third Lyceum site will be Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. At this site, we will hear about the women of the Lyceum and about the women who sought other public speaking lecture circuits because they were banned from early Lyceum forums. Listening to professional interpreters presenting orations by these first female circuit orators and discussing their impact on American culture then and now will be an enriching and unforgettable experience.
Mechanics Hall

Boston

We then return to Boston to hear an interpreter delivery a speech by Frederick Douglass and to discuss his fiery oratory. And we spend an afternoon with Edward Everett, the “Cicero of America,” as he was called. We hear him deliver perhaps his most illustrious Lyceum oration, “The Character of Washington,” and we come to understand the power of biography as it was used for rhetorical purposes on the Lyceum stage. We learn about the strategies used by all these orators, about how they “discovered the available means of persuasion,” as Aristotle so famously defined the art of rhetoric. A comprehensive itinerary may be viewed on our website.
Northeastern University