Officially, the Horological Society of New York (HSNY) will celebrate its 160th anniversary on March 26. On that day in 1866, a small group of men, primarily German emigres, gathered in a tavern in downtown Manhattan to discuss horology and to formally create an organization—then known as the Deutscher Uhrmacher Verein (German Watchmakers Society)—that would further their interests as inventors and craftsmen.

Unofficially, however, the real celebration will take five place days earlier, on Saturday, March 21, when the society plans to welcome 500 people to its annual gala at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Once a low-key affair, the event has quietly become one of the watch world’s hottest tickets.

“Each year, the gala has been getting bigger and better, really since Covid,” Nick Manousos, HSNY’s longtime executive director, tells Robb Report. “We had no gala in 2020 and 2021, obviously. And in 2022, we restarted and it was at the Harvard Club of New York, which is a beautiful club. It looks like you’ve stepped back in time when you go into this place. But we eventually outgrew it. So in 2025, we moved to the Plaza.

“We have been super busy planning,” Manousos adds. “It’s like putting on a wedding and a very large wedding at that. This will be our second year at the Plaza Hotel. And as of last week, we were sold out. We’ve completely maxed out the venue.”

One reason this year’s celebration, which will take place in the Plaza’s grand ballroom, is poised to be the biggest one ever has to do with the evening’s main honoree. On stage before an audience of watchmakers, collectors, and press, the society will present the Howard Fass Award for Lifetime Achievement, its highest honor, to none other than watchmaker François-Paul Journe.

“We haven’t done lifetime achievement awards super often,” Manousos says. “It’s not something we do every year, but when we do them, we want them to be especially meaningful. And I can’t think of anyone else who’s in the zeitgeist as much as François-Paul is these days.”

For the first time, the event features three co-chairs: the venerated British watchmaker Roger Smith; Danièla Dufour, the daughter of the revered Swiss watchmaker Philippe Dufour; and Ben Ahlers, a New York-based actor who played a watchmaker on seasons two and three of HBO’s The Gilded Age. “Co-chairs are something that we have not really done before, but it’s sometimes done in bigger, fancier New York galas,” Manousos says. “And we thought this could be an opportunity for us.”

The fact that two of the event’s three co-chairs are flying in from overseas to show their support for the HSNY speaks to the organization’s reputation, both in America and abroad, as a support system for talented young watchmakers.

“The money we raise at the gala specifically goes back into our scholarships,” Manousos says. “Last year, 2025, we had the biggest year ever in terms of scholarships. We awarded $160,000 in total financial aid to a large group of students and to watchmaking schools across the country. And this year, we’re going to do even more. We’re seeing applications from almost every student in the country. We’ve now expanded our scholarships and awards for schools worldwide. This year, we’re doing something new that we’re calling the Independent Watchmaker Grant.

“If you go to watchmaking school and you do really well, you graduate and you get a job at a big service center,” he adds. “Maybe you’d like to branch out and make your own watches, become an independent watchmaker. But to do that, you really need financial backing because it takes at least a year if you’re the fastest, most efficient watchmaker ever, to make your first watch, market it, get orders, and start to sell it. And what do you do in the meantime? You either have a family member that can support you financially or you take out loans. There’ll be three grants of $50,000 each. We have applications coming in from everywhere. We’ve had three from Finland. And it’s a lot of people doing some really cool and exciting things.”

While the gala may be the society’s ritziest event, its monthly lecture series is its most tried-and-true happening. A mainstay since the organizations’ founding, the evening lectures take place inside the HSNY’s 2,000-square-foot library, located on the fifth floor of the General Society Building on Midtown’s historic “club row” on West 44th Street.

Most speakers are watchmakers or brand representatives—the legendary Finnish watchmaker Kari Voutilainen gave the February lecture, while Sébastian Vivas, Audemars Piguet’s heritage and museum director, will lead the lecture on March 2—but many speakers approach horology from an unfamiliar perspective.

“The way I characterize it is that we are the Horological Society, not the Wristwatch Society,” Manousos says. “Although wristwatches are by and far the most popular aspect of horology, when we think about the big subject today, it’s not everything. In January we had a lecture from someone that runs an Instagram that’s become popular, called New York City Clocks. She is not a watchmaker or a clock maker, but she has this fascinating Instagram where she documents every public clock in the entire city. We’ve had lectures from physicists, people talking about outer space and black holes and how all of that relates to time. It’s probably 90 percent watchmaking, but there’s more to it than that.”

You could say the same thing about the society. Bibliophiles can’t miss the organization’s Jost Bürgi Research Library. “The library is a fantastic resource for anyone that is interested in learning more about horology,” Manousos says. “It’s an easy place to get lost in the stacks and just browse and read books. We’ve got about 25,000 titles on every aspect of horology you can think of. And it’s all catalogued. So if you come into the library and you say, ‘I’m really interested in marine chronometers,’ we have a whole section on marine chronometers. If you say, ‘I’m really interested in sundials,’ we have a whole section on sundials. What about the philosophy of time? We’ve got a whole section on it. My favorite section is kids’ books.

“It’s a physical location in Manhattan, but you don’t need to be in New York City to utilize it,” he adds. “We offer research services for free to anyone, anywhere in the world. And we often get really interesting requests from people who are stuck trying to research something. We have books that contain things you just can’t Google.

Manousos emphasizes that the library is free and open to the public. “We never turn anyone away,” he says. “You don’t have to be a member. You don’t even have to be researching horology. You can just come in and have a cup of coffee if you’d like. If you have a particularly in-depth research question, you can make a research appointment and the librarians will have material ready for you as soon as you arrive, which is helpful, but there’s no requirement to do that. It’s a library. And libraries, by definition, I think, have to be welcoming to everyone. That’s what we really focus on doing.”