A beautiful June day in New York

Midtown Manhattan from the Upper East Side terrace of Terry Allen Kramer and Nick Simunek last night. 8:15. Photo: DPC.

A beautiful June day in New York; fair, mild, sunny, breezy; followed by a beautiful evening.

Over at the Harold Pratt/Council on Foreign Relations house on the corner of 68th and Park, Nordstrom and Vogue hosted a cocktail reception for New Yorkers For Children, a kick-off for their fall gala which will be held on September 16th which will also kick-off the fall social season in New York.

This will be the 9th annual New Yorkers For Children Gala, now one of the most sought-after gala tickets in town for the 30-/40- Something social set in New York. No surprise Doug Hannant was there last night, and Zac Posen, Carolina Herrera, Peter Som, Thakoon, and of course Oscar de la Renta who is one of the founders with Nicholas Scoppetta and Susan Burden of the NYFC.

Nordstrom’s is also staging a special sale (“by invitation only”) of fashion items today at the Pratt mansion with proceeds going to New Yorkers for Children. They are also underwriting the upcoming gala with a $100,000 donation to the charity.

The Harold I. Pratt house, now the home of the Council on Foreign Relations was built between 1919 and 1921. Mr. Pratt was one of six sons and the youngest of the eight children of Charles Pratt, an early partner of John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil. The son was a Director of Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon) and also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His wife, Harriet Barnes was a member of a wealthy New York family. She was a philanthropist, a collector of Americana and a horticulturist. They had three children. The family also had an estate in Glen Cove (where several other family members had houses), Welwyn, which is now the Nassau County Museum.

The Park Avenue house was designed by Delano & Aldrich (who also designed Welwyn) in a neo-classical style, similar to the firm’s design for the Union Club which sits on the other side of the avenue one block up. The architects designed many clubs and residences in New York including the Knickerbocker Club, the Colony Club, and the Willard Straight house on Fifth Avenue and 94th Street (now the residence of Bruce Kovner). Only the best materials available were used in constructing the house which is reputed to have cost over one million dollars in 1920.

The exterior is of limestone, custom made in the United States and the inside floors are mainly parquet, oak, or a self-polishing marble. As is typical of other houses of the period, a large kitchen and service area were installed in the basement. The Pratt’s dining room was on the main floor where the current Drawing Room now exists. Up the winding staircase on the second floor was a library which also functioned as a dining room and is now used by the Council as the Library. The current Mansion Ballroom was the Pratts’ formal drawing room. At Mrs. Pratt’s insistence it was square, being modeled after a room she had seen in Ireland. It is decorated with pine paneling and beautiful chandeliers each of whose crystals are different.

Comfortable bedrooms on the third floor, many with fireplaces, housed Mr. and Mrs. Pratt, their son and two daughters. The fourth floor contained children’s playrooms and sewing rooms and the fifth floor house the majority of the seventeen servants employed to keep the house functioning.

Mr. Pratt died in 1939 in his sixty-second year. In 1944 when the Council was outgrowing its existing space, Mr. Hamilton Fish Armstrong telephoned Mrs. Pratt to see if she would donate her house which was then boarded up as no one was living in it. The next day Mrs. Pratt called to say that she would give the house to the Council.

Susan Burden introduced me to Pete Nordstrom. I was telling him I first became aware of the store when I lived in Los Angeles where it has a major presence and has an excellent reputation as a fashion specialty retailer. Mr. Nordstrom told me they now had 159 stores in 28 states, with locations around New York and were aiming for the Big Apple.

New Yorkers for Children was created twelve years ago to affect the lives of young people in foster care through college scholarships, tutoring programs, mentoring and networking opportunities. There are almost 17,000 children in foster care in New York City. NYFC is committed to providing these youth with essential tools to help themselves become more successful, self-sufficient adults.

Commissioner Scoppetta, who was himself in foster care as a boy, explained to the crowd last night that when young people come out of foster care they are virtually on their own. There is very often no family, no anchor, no backup. The transition is a very difficult challenge and can be very hard going. This is a crucial and sensitive time in a person’s life – not child, not adult and in need of making a place for him or herself. NYFC’s programs are designed to assist and fortify these young people in going out into the world. This is when a person needs a friend. It is also a great opportunity for those of us who want to affect another’s life in a positive way, through mentoring and tutoring and creating networking opportunities.

Oscar de la Renta and friends

Nicholas Scoppetta and Joy Bryant

Clockwise from top left: Susan Burden and Pete Nordstrom; Mark Gilbertson, Felicia Taylor, and Fred Anderson; Susan Magazine, Susan Burden, Donya Bommer, and Valesca Guerrand Hermes; Stephanie Winston Wolkoff and Amy McFarland.

I left the NYFC cocktail and walked around the corner to the penthouse of Terry Allen Kramer and Nick Simunek where they were hosting a book party for Christopher Tennant and his new book “The Official Filthy Rich Handbook (How the Other .0001% Lives).”

The book’s chapters are a primer on who and what and where in the lives of those who are so rich they don’t have to worry about the rent or the next meal. Instead they have to worry about getting the right staff to man the mansion and the right chef to prepare the next meal, and the right clothes and clubs and cars and yachts and private jets. You know, all those things people like awake worrying about after they won the lottery. All those things you thought you’d never master, you can learn from Mr. Tennant’s book.

Chapters are things like “Buying a Better You; Looking the Part,” “Playgrounds and Pastimes; Get a Hobby,” “To Heir is Divine; Billionaire Breeding Habits,” “Afflictions & Pretensions; Surviving at the Top.” That kind of stuff that takes up where the Preppy Handbook left off.

Alexandra Wolfe and John Ackerly

Debbie Bancroft and Jay Snyder

In fact this is for those very early Preppy Handbook followers who’ve now grown up (or something like that) and are now earning eight figures on Wall Street or someplace like that, and need to know. Or for the rest of us schumpfs who wouldn’t mind knowing just so we can dream authentically. You can learn “the importance of seeming arty,” “the right cosmetic surgeries for you..and you children,” “the only clubs were joining,” “bullet proofing the Maybach.”

Tom Wolfe remarked about the oeuvre: “Reading this handbook is like eating 12 baked Alaskas in a row, but Christopher Tennant seems to know la dolce vita Americana billionara, every sweet morsel of it.”

So there you have it; and there we were last night high above the town just as the sun was setting over the Hudson, on this heavenly penthouse terrace with its lush gardens and spectacular views, with waitstaff passing the spring rolls, and the pigs-in-a-blanket, and the California rolls; and the bar stocked with anything your little heart desired (to drink), and our excellent host and hostess who welcome you into their house as if you were coming home to relax. You could almost feel like one of Chris Tennant’s filthy rich, living like the other .0001%. A nice way to end the day in little ole New York.