Take a Self-Guided Tour of E.L. Doctorow’s New Rochelle

"Ragtime "– published 50 years ago – is having a moment: A revival of the sweeping musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel just opened for a limited run at Lincoln Center and the New Rochelle Public Library has put together a weekend of celebratory events called Ragtime at 50 (Saturday, October 4th and Sunday, October 5th). The weekend events invite the community to revisit this literary masterpiece through film, live performance, and conversation with artists who helped bring Doctorow’s vision to the stage.

And just in time for all the anniversary excitement, the New Rochelle Council on the Arts is releasing A Self Guided Tour of E.L. Doctorow’s New Rochelle that will show readers some of the sites that appear in the book -- and that also fed the author’s imagination.

Written by New Rochelle’s City Historian Barbara Davis, the brochure is based on a trolley tour she conducted for ArtsFest in 2023. “The guide lets readers step into the past to experience first-hand what inspired Doctorow as he wrote this book,” says Davis, who is also Director of the Westchester County Historical Society.

“The New Rochelle Council on the Arts is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year as well, so we thought it was a great way to mark both milestones,” says Theresa Kump Leghorn, President of NRCA. “The tour includes the statue of E.L. Doctorow that we helped bring to Huguenot Park,” she adds, noting that NRCA was the lead agency in a collaboration that included the City of New Rochelle and the New Rochelle Fund for Educational Excellence. “We’re very proud of this public art because it honors one of the most important novelists of the 20th century who put New Rochelle at the center of his masterpiece.” Printed copies of the brochure will be available at the New Rochelle Public Library this weekend and can also be downloaded from the NRCA website www.newrochellearts.org.