Rainless summer day in New York

Looking east towards the Empire State Building from 35th and 11th Avenue. 11:35 PM. Photo: JH.

June 24, 2009. A sunny, totally rainless summer day in New York. Warm enough that the cabs were turning on the air-conditioners for those air conditioner-spoiled New Yorkers. By late afternoon the lavendar blue-grey storm clouds were hovering to the north and to the southwest, finally ignoring us for a beautiful evening.

I went down to Swifty’s for lunch with an old friend I hadn’t seen in some time. The place was packed with the decibel level matched. The weather had lifted the mood.

Early in the evening I went to two notable book parties which were coincidentally next door to each other on 93rd Street and Madison Avenue.

The first was Gloria Vanderbilt’s book signing for her new novel, Obsession; An Erotic Tale, at The Corner Bookstore on 93rd Street and Madison; and the second was Geoffrey Bradfield’s reception at Carlton Hobbs Mansion, two doors in (to the east) from The Corner Bookstore on 93rd Street.

Gloria Vanderbilt. Click to order.

Jeanette Watson and her friend, proprietor of the Corner Bookstore.

The Corner Bookstore is small and cozy and neighborhood-y (nice neighborhood too, is Carnegie Hill), and famous. It was the bookstore they used in the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film “You’ve Got Mail.” If you read the bookstore’s reviews (type in “The Corner Bookstore New York”), their clientele loves it. It’s a local hub where they often hold readings and book signings like the one they held for Gloria Vanderbilt last night.

I got there too late for Gloria’s little talk before she sat down to sign books. Someone told me she was very good. This is not surprising. She is possibly the only “celebrity” I’ve ever met who continues to maintain a charisma even after you get to know her. She’s this dazzlingly unusual woman Gloria, not like anyone else, whatever she says and does. It’s of a whole. As a young woman she was famous as a semi-orphaned heiress, who beginning at 16, was much married and much fashionable. But it turns out it’s an artist’s life the world has been watching for the past eight decades.


	Gloria's inscription

Then there’s the face. Matthew Patrick Smyth who collaborated with Gloria on a Kips Bay Showhouse room told me that there was an opening day visitor who when she met Gloria didn’t believe she was the real Gloria. Because she “didn’t look old enough.” Later the woman realized it was Gloria and she apologized.

Gloria’s novel is about a woman who discovers her husband of ten years (who had died suddenly) had a sexual obsession with another woman during their marriage. She discovered this in a cache of erotic letters the husband had exchanged with his lover. It wasn't exacrtly a pleasant surprise for the widow but even it An Erotic Tale it becomes. The cirscumstances of the tale are not as unusual an occurrence as you might think. Gloria no doubt knows this because despite her apparently eternal youthfulness, she has a lived a big life and a long life, an artist’s banquet.

No doubt she also sold a lot of books last night at the Corner Bookstore. She’s a pro too. There was a long line and Gloria signed away in her penmanship that describes that aforementioned charisma and took care of her fans and readers.

Book signed, visit finished, I went up the block about fifty feet to the Carlton Hobbs Mansion where there was a reception for Geoffrey Bradfield and his new book, Geoffrey Bradfield Ex Arte.

The mansion's entrance gallery.

The peacock scene at Geoffrey's reception.

You’ve read about the Carlton Hobbs Mansion on the NYSD before. It was built in the late 1920s/early 1930s by Virginia Graham Fair Vanderbilt (always known as Birdie) after her divorce from William K. Vanderbilt Jr. (who was a first cousin of Gloria Vanderbilt’s father, Reginald). Mrs. Vanderbilt’s father, James Graham Fair, was a prospector who hit it big in the Comstock Lode – still regarded as the greatest silver discovery ever. Mrs. V’s sister, Blanche Oelrichs, built the famous Rosecliffe in Newport.

This 93rd Street house was designed for entertaining. And grandeur. Mrs. Vanderbilt moved in 1931. Two years later her young son William K. Vanderbilt III was killed in an automobile accident in South Carolina. Two years after that Mrs. Vanderbilt died of pneumonia. The death of her son darkened the house. It was a grief Birdie Vanderbilt never recovered from.

Geoffrey Bradfield, Liliana Cavendish, and Hunt Slonem

Helena Lehane

For years the house was part of the Lycee Francais. Today, it has been painstaking refurbished and restored by the British antiquaire Carlton Hobbs who exhibits his extraordinary collection there. Mr. Hobbs has the English sensibility of a grand European house rarely seen in this country, and this one provides witness. Last night it played host to hundreds of Geoffrey Bradfield’s friends and associates and it had the mark of a Geoffrey Bradfield party (which have been subject on the NYSD before).

The book is, unlike Gloria’s, not small – but a coffee table book described as “... A dazzling tribute to decades of magnificent design from the internationally acclaimed designer and architect Geoffrey Bradfield.”

Brad and Amy Fine Collins

Richard Turley and Denise Rich

The Hollywood Version. By which I mean, Geoffrey is an artist’s showman. Often called the “billionaire’s interior designer,” his work and his environment, like Gloria Vanderbilt’s ventures, are a part of a whole, as well as its own kind of banquet. His parties reflect that. They’re big and fun and glamorous, with a touch of the exotic. He even transports himself around town in a chauffeur driven Bentley. A large one. Like the houses he often creates for his international clientele, many of whom are avid contemporary art collectors.

There must have been two hundred or more filling the grand rooms, milling about, visiting, quaffing champagne and popping hors d’oeuvres, and having a good time and not goin’ nowhere, taking in some of that residual Vanderbilt vibe that coincidentally seemed to be all over the neighborhood last night, one way or another.