Get your Gatsby On

A State by State Guide to Celebrating the April 10 Centennial of "The Great Gatsby."

A first edition of “The Great Gatsby” at a recent exhibition at Sotheby’s.

On April 10, 1925, Charles Scribner & Sons published The Great Gatsby, a 200-page parable of Jazz Age America by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It received respectable reviews and sold under 20,000 copies.

But its reputation grew steadily, particularly after Fitzgerald’s death in 1940 and the subsequent reevaluation of his work. Today, it is among the most widely read works of fiction of all time, and is a regular contender for that elusive title: the Great American Novel. It has begat several movies, dozens of stage adaptations and countless Roaring ‘20s style parties.

Finally, it is that rare book whose centennial is a cause for national celebration. Across the nation, Gatsby readings, seminars and bashes are on the calendar. The Mix has rounded up a selection for you to choose from.

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

New York City

The Plaza Hotel is the setting of a pivotal scene in The Great Gatsby. The hotel is not as accessible to the public as it once was, but you can give it a try. The doorman may be a Fitzgerald fan and give you a pass. Fitzgerald and his wife famously jumped in the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel. The Mix is in no way suggesting you do the same. But you can go visit the fountain and imagine Scott and Zelda splashing about.

You could see the musical adaptation of The Great Gatsby currently playing on Broadway. I have not seen it, and, quite frankly, I have heard nothing good from people who have. But, hey, it’s the anniversary! And tickets are still available for both the matinee and evening performance on April 10.

You could also walk across the Queensboro Bridge, which Gatsby and the gang cruise along in one scene in the book: “The city seen from Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world.... 'Anything can happen now that we've slid across this bridge,' I thought. 'Anything at all.'"

Princeton, New Jersey

Fitzgerald’s alma mater—from which he did not actually graduate—is doing up the anniversary of Gatsby in grand style. Many of the university’s lectures and activities have already occurred, but you’re not too late to catch a few events. Here’s the remaining rundown:

• Literature to Life: Performing Gatsby
  April 3, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
  Drapkin Theater Studio, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University (no registration required)

• “The Great Gatsby” Community Filibuster Read-Aloud
  April 7, 2025, 11:00 a.m.
  Princeton Public Library

• Author Visit with Nghi Vo “Don’t Sleep with the Dead” Book Launch
  April 8, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
  Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street (no registration required)

• “The Great Gatsby” viewing (2013 movie)
  April 9, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
  Princeton Garden Theatre, 160 Nassau Street

• PUL Crafternoon: Roaring 20s Headband
  April 10, 2025, 12:30 p.m.
  Firestone Library, Discovery Hub. Registration required. (For Princeton University Students, Faculty, and Staff only)

• Raconteur Radio performance of “The Great Gatsby”
  April 22, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
  Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street. Registration required.

• The Great “Catsby”
  April 26, 2025,
  Cotsen Children’s Library, Firestone Library

• Friends of Princeton University Library Annual Dinner with Maureen Corrigan, author of “So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures”
  April 27, 2025, 6:00 p.m. (Reception at 5:15 p.m.)
  The Nassau Club ($125 per person, email libraryf@princeton.edu for more information)

• “What’s So Great About ‘The Great Gatsby’?”
  Panel Discussion featuring Maureen Corrigan and Anne Margaret Daniel, editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories (2017) and the Norton Library edition of The Great Gatsby (2022); moderated by Alfred Bendixen, Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality Studies
  April 28, 2025, 4:30 p.m.
  Co-hosted with Labyrinth Books
  Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street

• After-hours Speakeasy, featuring The Glenn Crytzer Quartet
  May 2, 2025, 7:00 p.m.
  Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street

Fitzgerald at Princeton. (Back row, third from left.)

Great Neck, Long Island

Great Neck was the model for the fictional West Egg and East Egg neighborhoods where much of The Great Gatsby is set. To commemorate the area’s undying connection to the book, the Great Neck Library is holding a series of events through the month of April, including an art exhibition, talks about the book, lectures, film screenings, jazz music, a Gatsby trivia night and even an antique car show. April 10 is reserved for a screening of the 1974 Robert Redford-Mia Farrow movie of the novel.

St. Paul

Fitzgerald’s home town is certainly not going to be left out of the Gatsby centennial celebrations.

• On April 10, at the Minnesota History Center, the Minnesota Historical Society and the Friends of the St. Paul Library will do a live reading of the entire book. While you’re at the History Center, take a look at items related to Fitzgerald from the MNHS Collections that are on display in the Gale Family Library.

• On April 16, The artist, Katherine Woodman Maynard will talk about adapting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book into a graphic novel at Urban Growler, 2325 Endicott Street.

• Be sure to visit the writer’s modest birthplace at 481 Laurel Street, which bears a plaque—it’s the second-floor apartment to the left of the three-story, six-apartment building. After that, stroll over to the Commodore Hotel, an Art Deco building that opened in 1920. Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda lived upstairs from 1920 to 1921. Fitzgerald frequented the hotel bar when it became a speakeasy during Prohibition. It is unfortunately temporarily closed to public dining, but you can stand outside and dream. It is open for private events, in case you want to throw a party!

• Walk a few more blocks to W.A. Frost & Co., a restaurant that opened in 1975. It was a pharmacy back in Fitzgerald’s day. The writer would buy his cigarettes there.

Louisville

Fitzgerald gave the Seelbach Hotel in downtown Louisville a brief mention in The Great Gatsby. In the novel, it's where the monied young couple Tom and Daisy Buchanan get married. This year, the hotel has capitalized on that bit of literary notoriety by converting two of its second-floor rooms into The Gatsby Suite. I wrote about my experience staying in that suite recently.

The Rathskeller at the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville.

It you can’t nab a night in the suite between now and April 10, just walk down to the old Rathskeller in the basement of the hotel. During World War I, the Rathskeller was transformed into a USO-style club for soldiers at nearby Camp Taylor. Fitzgerald supposedly drank there. Unlike the lobby’s Seelbach Bar, this gorgeous drinking hall looks exactly as it did in Fitzgerald’s day. It is the only intact space left in the United States that is decorated completely with Rookwood Pottery, the once renowned manufacturer of ceramics based in Cincinnati.

Los Angeles

Fitzgerald in Los Angeles.

Fitzgerald moved to Los Angeles permanently in 1937 to make money writing screenplays for the Hollywood studios. He spent his final years there. He, along with many other writers, liked to hang out at the bar in Musso & Frank Grill, a landmark on Hollywood Boulevard for more than 100 years.

Most of the other places where Fitzgerald used to live at or haunt—the Ambassador Hotel, Garden of Allah, Pickwick Bookshop—are now gone. The Pantages Theater, however, is still there. He viewed the premiere of the comedy This Thing Called Love there the day before he died.

Stockton, New Jersey

The Stockton Inn.

Fitzgerald hung out in other places in the Garden State beside Princeton. The Stockton Inn, a 300-year-old resting place in western Jersey, operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition. Fitzgerald found it, as he found almost all sources of illegal hooch during The Noble Experiment. The Inn was recently restored and reopened and the bar program is now under the control of the estimable Brian Miller. He can certainly make you a libation worthy of a Gatsbyan party.

Baltimore

The Fitzgerald house in Baltimore.

Scott and Zelda lived in Baltimore for a few years starting in 1932, first taking up residence at 1307 Park Avenue. Here, he finished his novel Tender Is the Night. The townhouse still stands and has a plaque on it indicating Fitzgerald’s stay. F. Scott Fitzgerald Park is located nearby at the southeast corner of Bolton and Wilson Streets.

You can also visit the old Belvedere Hotel, now converted to condos. During his time in the city, Fitzgerald frequented the hotel’s popular watering hole, The Owl Bar, sometimes joined by his old champion, The Baltimore Sun editor H.L. Menken.

Rockville, Maryland

The Fitzgeralds’ grave.

For a more somber observance of The Great Gatsby, pay your respects at the Saint Mary's Catholic Church Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. Scott and his wife Zelda are buried here. Fitzgerald ended up there because his father Edward’s people were from Maryland and the elder Fitzgerald was buried there. So, too, eventually, were Scott and Zelda, though Scott spent 27 years in limbo in nearby Rockville Cemetery because, at the time of his death, the novelist wasn’t deemed religious enough by the local Catholic brass.

The grave bears the final lines from Gatsby:

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Montgomery, Alabama

Montgomery is the location of the Fitzgerald Museum, situated in 919 Felder Avenue, which Scott and Zelda called home from 1931 to 1932. Here, they wrote portions of their respective novels, Tender Is The Night and Save Me The Waltz. Zelda was a native of Montgomery. The Felder Avenue home was originally built between 1905-1910. Eventually, their daughter Scottie would return to Montgomery in the early 1970s and live there until her death in 1986.

On April 12, the museum will host “The Great Gatsby Centennial Extravaganza Party,” complete with an orchestra, dancing and thematic cocktails.

The Fitzgerald Museum’s regular hours are Thursday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The museum has two Airbnb suites that you can book.

A 1922 caricature of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Asheville, North Carolina

Zelda ended her days in a sanatorium in Asheville, dying in a fire in 1948. Scott spent a couple years in the city before that sorry event, staying in the massive Grove Park Inn. It still functions as an Omni hotel. He stayed in Rooms 441 and 443, on the side of the hotel where he could see the sun coming up. This is, thus, not the most joyous way to commemorate the author, but if that’s where you happen to be in Asheville on April 10, the hotel is the strongest Fitzgerald connection.

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If you can’t get to any of these locations or events, there’s always the book itself. Curl up with a Gimlet, Old Sport, put on some “yellow cocktail music” and dive in. It’s only 200 pages and goes by very quickly. A fast reader can tackle it in an evening; a slow reader (like me) in two or three.

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” [Nick] ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”

“Can’t repeat the past?” [Gatsby] cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”

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Odds and Ends…

Bill Addison wrote an ode to the Martini in the Los Angeles Times, particularly the one served at Musso & Frank Grill, and took time to cite The Martini Cocktail by yours truly… I wrote in Grub Street about a new breed of cocktails bars that are emphasize lower prices and a focus on the classics. Examples include Gus’ Sip & Dip in Chicago, Gilly’s House of Cocktails in San Diego, El Camino in New York, and the upcoming Close Company bars from Death & Co…

Speaking of El Camino, Sarah Morrissey (Le Veau d’Or, Le Rock, Ernesto’s) is now bartending there… On April 8, Hawksmoor in Manhattan will host a “cocktail swap,” with St. John Frizell and the Gage and Tollner team take over the bar at Hawksmoor… The Ford Motor Company’s historic Dearborn Inn officially reopened on March 19, following a restoration that honors its nearly century-old legacy. Originally built in 1931 by Henry Ford, the 135-room property brings two new dining concepts, led by Executive Chef Elliot Patti: Clara’s Table, a farm-to-table restaurant; and Four Vagabonds, a cocktail lounge inspired by the road trips taken by Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, John Burroughs, and Harvey Firestone.