The New Yorker Celebrates 100 Years

On Tuesday evening, Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly were sitting at a sidewalk table outside Jean’s, a chic night spot in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Nearby, writers, critics and cartoonists streamed past a black rope and a bouncer to attend The New Yorker’s 100th anniversary party.

Mr. Spiegelman, the graphic novelist who has been a contributor to the publication since 1992, puffed on a slender e-cigarette. Ms. Mouly, the magazine’s longtime art editor, took in the scene. The two have been married almost 50 years.

“The New Yorker is the last of its kind standing, and tonight we’re celebrating that,” Mr. Spiegelman said. “I still remember meeting the great writer Joseph Mitchell in the magazine’s hallway. I felt like I was in the presence of a monument.”

Ms. Mouly, who recently curated a centennial exhibit of the magazine’s covers for L’Alliance New York, a French cultural center, also reflected on the big night.

“A hundred years of The New Yorker is a vindication of what I believe in,” she said. “Now there’s TikTok, and all the minutes people spend on it, but to me a magazine is a magazine is a magazine. That copies of The New Yorker used to pile up at the foot of the bed was once the magazine’s curse, but to me now that’s a point of pride.”

The choice of Jean’s as the venue for a party meant to celebrate a publication known for deeply reported articles and literary fiction came as a bit of a surprise to Hua Hsu, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes about music and culture for the magazine.

“I guess part of me was hoping the party might be at some stuffy old uptown spot,” he said. “But this magazine can only be what it is because of the young people who keep coming through it and imparting their vision, so I think this venue nicely reflects that.”

As Iggy Pop and Fleetwood Mac played from the speakers, the place was packed with bookish guests who squeezed past one another on their way to a seafood platter.

David Remnick, who became the magazine’s fifth editor in 1998, roamed the floor, as did his predecessor in the job, Tina Brown.

“It would be the height of presumption to think anything can last another 100 years, and I know we’re all obsessed with every new thing that comes down the highway,” Mr. Remnick said. “But I absolutely believe that people will always want what we do at The New Yorker.”

He grew pensive as he considered two stalwarts of the magazine who were now gone. “I miss Janet Malcolm, and I miss Roger Angell,” he said. “I’ll always remember sitting with him in the left field stands for the Yankees. It was one of the great nights of my life.”

A pack of fiction writers — Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Lethem — gathered by the bar. The club was also flooded with staff writers including Rachel Aviv, Adam Gopnik, Jia Tolentino, Naomi Fry, Vinson Cunningham, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Helen Rosner, Kelefa Sanneh, Rachel Syme, Kyle Chayka and Doreen St. Félix.

“The New Yorker doesn’t really change, which can be seen as a marker of conservatism, but there’s something to be gleaned by consistency,” Ms. St. Félix said. “We’re entering an era where there won’t be many things that last a hundred years.”

As waiters offered fries in Anthora coffee cups, bartenders served cocktails with New Yorker-appropriate names. The gin-based Tipsy Tilley referred to the magazine’s foppish mascot, Eustace Tilley, who appeared on the cover of the first issue, dated Feb. 21, 1925. Versions of the character, created by the cartoonist Rea Irvin, appear on the six cover variants the magazine rolled out for its anniversary issue this month.

“I think that in this day and age, endurance means something,” Susan Orlean, a longtime staff writer, said. “Tonight is like celebrating the centennial of the United States. We made it.”

The critic Emily Nussbaum danced beneath a disco ball alongside editors, fact-checkers and editorial assistants. Also present at Jean’s were the cartoonist Roz Chast and the writers Daniel Mendelsohn and Bill Buford. Roger Lynch and Jonathan Newhouse were among the executives at Condé Nast, the publisher that operates The New Yorker, who made the party.

Judith Thurman, who started writing for the magazine in 1987, made her way to the coat check. She said the party was a little more boisterous than she had expected.

“You could be wearing a garbage bag here, it’s so dark,” she said. “I don’t know if this venue is that great for those of us with hearing problems.”

“At first I thought this was my 100th birthday party, but then I remembered I’m only 78,” she added. “The more A.I. takes over, and TikTok takes over, the more there’s going to be a resistance to it one day. And The New Yorker will be here, more necessary than ever.”

As the party wound down, Patrick Radden Keefe reminisced about stepping into David Grann’s office to get structural advice on his stories. The film critic Richard Brody and the food writer Hannah Goldfield traded notes on “The Brutalist” and the merits of intermissions.

Calvin Trillin, who started writing for the magazine in 1963, was holding court by the bar as Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” blasted from a speaker.

“I’m 89 now, so I haven’t been here for all of the hundred years, but I’ve been here for quite a few,” he said. “Tonight I’ve thought about Joseph Mitchell, and how in awe I was of him. My wife used to say to me, ‘Why don’t you just ask him if he wants to go to lunch with you?’ But I didn’t have the nerve to.”

He swiped a cookie from a passing tray.

“A hundred years is a long time,” he said, “but I hope The New Yorker will go on for another hundred. There’s no good reason not to.”