Social Diary 5/10/05 - The Landmarks of New York

Landmarks

Last night, two members of the cast of Avenue Q opened the dedication of two Shubert theaters (the Schoenfeld and the Jacobs) with puppets in the likeness of Gerry Schoenfeld and the late Bernie Jacobs. 7:45 PM. Photo: JH.

The Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram’s Building is an official landmark now. Thank God. And thanks to people like Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel who had a book signing in the restaurant last night for her new book, a second edition – The Landmarks of New York; an Illustrated Record of the City’s Historic Buildings (The Monacelli Press).

DPC and Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel lunching at Michael's a few weeks ago

She drew an eclectic group of New Yorkers to celebrate the publication of her 19th book, hosted by Julian Niccolini and Alex von Bidder at their quintessential literary landmark restaurant. They were there from museums, Leopoldo Rodes, Chairman, Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona; Marc Pachter, the Director, National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC; Suzanne Delehanty, Director, Miami Art Museum; Charles Diker, Chairman, Museum of American Indian; from the city were Amanda Burden, Chair, The City Planning Commission; former Chairs of the Landmarks Preservation Commission Kent Barwick and Laurie Beckelman; Ambassador Nicholas Platt (the former Director of the Asia Society), whose father, Geoffrey Platt was the first Chair of the Landmarks Preservation Commission and whose grandfather, the architect Charles Platt designed many buildings that are now New York Landmarks.

Also there were Henry J. Stern, former Parks Commissioner; architects, Richard Meier, James Stewart Polshek, Mike Dwyer, Michael Haverland; Lella and Massimo Vignelli; Jeanne-Claude and Christo; Rabbi Ronald Sobel; Phil Aarons, President, Millennium Partners; publishers, Steven Newhouse; Walter Anderson and Lee Kravitz of Parade Magazine, Klara Glowczewska, Editor, Conde Nast Traveler, Paul Steiger, Editor, Wall Street Journal, Joanne Lipman, Assistant Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal, Katherine Oliver, NYC Commissioner, Film, TV and Theatre; Myron Kandell; Howard Rubenstein, Silda Wall, aka Mrs. Eliot Spitzer; Kathy Newhouse and her husband Dr. Joe Mele; Gianfranco Monacelli, the publisher of LONY; Rosemary Vietor, of The Bowne House Historical Society (the Bowne house is one of the oldest and most important American landmarks and located in Queens); Liz Newman, Fred and Michele Oka Doner, Paul Beirne, Robert Zimmerman.

Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel signing books last night at The Four Seasons

The concept of a landmark entered the consciousness of many New Yorkers back in the 1968 when Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis lent herself to the saving of the demolition of Grand Central Terminal. Yes, they were actually trying to tear down the architectural legacy of Commodore Vanderbilt, built 92 years ago. Mrs. Onassis (then still Mrs. Kennedy), made public appearances with community groups that garnered the press attention worldwide and changed the course of the city planners and developers forever. Because of her enormous public prestige and honor, her participation, which was, albeit, minimal and brief, awakened the idea of protecting our architectural history.

The concept of landmarks began long before in the 19th century in this country when a woman named Ann Pamela Cunningham led the fight to save Mount Vernon. Today it is taken for granted that it is a national treasure. And a pleasure for the millions who have visited our first President’s home. In 1926 the reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg was begun, thanks to the vision of John D. Rockefeller Jr., who, not so incidentally managed to do the same for dear old France in his financing the early refurbishing (a roof) for Versailles.

In New York, a city of such dynamic metamorphosis that growth continually outpaces preservation, the business of landmarks is an ongoing battle. For many years it was almost invisible.

Between 1640 and 1850, for example, as Mrs. Diamonstein-Spielvogel writes in her book, “New York was characterized by thousand of red brick buildings and farmhouses .... In the middle of the 19th century a brownish-violet coating seemed to descend like a cloak over everything.”

" Brownstones” were so pervasive that Edith Wharton found them depressing enough to move to Paris. The Industrial Revolution and the private wealth it created changed all that. Alva Vanderbilt commissioned a limestone chateau on Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street, marking a change in the city’s surface that continued well into the 20th century until post-World War II New York saw the conversion into glass and steel.

My earliest memory of visiting New York was when I was six or seven, riding with my mother on an open top double decker bus, (which were regular buses), up Fifth Avenue to see the sights – which to visitors from out of town, is everything in New York.

Somewhere along that route, most likely between 59th and 96th, a block was being demolished, and on that particular sunny Sunday afternoon in the late 1940s, only the ground floor outer walls of crumbling brick remained of what once had been a large building. Demolition was a newly discovered process to this child then growing up in a small New England town on a street and in a house that had been built as a farmhouse in the 1850s.

Fascinated by the destruction, I asked my mother what this “demolished” structure had been. She told me it was the “mansion of the Colgate family,” a phrase I never forgot because besides introducing the concept of a “mansion” to this child, I recognized the name from the toothpaste tube. The idea of “a family” living in such grandeur fed my imagination on the nature of New York City with a force that articulates a lot of my professional life today.

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Years later, grown-up but attempting to satisfy the child’s uncompleted curiosity, I went back into archives for an image of the Colgate mansion pre-demolition, only to discover that it hadn’t existed: what I had seen had belonged to some other family. My mother had either got her facts wrong or made something up to supply the child’s endless questions (probably the latter). I still wonder what that house looked like in its entirety, and to whom it belonged.

If Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel had been around, who knows – it might still even be standing. Although I doubt it considering the entire metamorphosis that all of Fifth Avenue (indeed even all of Manhattan) has undergone in the past half century.

Barbaralee, however, has been involved with the Landmarks Commission almost since its inception. A writer, television interviewer and producer, a former White House assistant and the first Director of Cultural Affairs of New York City, she was also the longest term Commissioner to have served on the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission – from 1972 to 1987. From then until 1995, she was Chair of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Foundation. She is the author of 19 books, which besides the Landmarks of New York volumes I, II and III, including Remaking America; Handmade in America, Buildings Reborn, New Uses, Old Places; Eighteen Wonders of the World.

All those “historic district street signs,” descriptive markers and maps in each of New York’s 84 historic districts, as well as the creation of bronze plaques that describe each of the more than 1100 individually designated landmarks buildings – that’s Barbaralee’s hand at work. Her new book is a treasure, to be pored over and later frequently consulted for histories of the buildings and therefore the people who shaped not only this great city, but this country, and even the world.

Dolly Lenz and Howard Lorber

Nicholas Platt

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Henry Stern and Corey Kunz

Carl Spielvogel

DPC and Jolie Hunt

Michele Oka Doner with Massimo and Lella Vignelli

Leopoldo Rodes and Richard Meier

Michele Oka Doner, Nancy Rosen, and Suzanne Delehanty

Parker Ladd, Nora Aponte, and Arnold Scaasi

After leaving the book party at the Four Seasons, JH and I hightailed it over to the Marriott Marquis on 45th and Broadway, itself hardly a landmark, the site of so much demolition that few buildings (except for the Paramount Building on 43rd and Broadway) along the main stem are still standing. We were going to the reception for Gerry Schoenfeld of the Shubert Organization.

Pat and Gerry Schoenfeld

At 7:30, just halfway down the block from the hotel, on 45th between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, New Yorkers were about to witness the re-naming of two Shubert theaters – the Plymouth, which last night became the Schoenfeld, and the Royale, which became the Jacobs.

Mr. Schoenfeld and the late Bernie Jacobs (who passed away in 1996) were the guiding forces behind the Shubert theater empire which began with three brothers from Syracuse, Sam, J.J. and Lee Shubert in the late 19th century. Today the Shubert Organization is the largest theater owner on the Great White Way (16, including the Winter Garden, the Lyceum, the Broadway, the Ethel Barrymore, as well as the Sardi Building). It also owns, leases and manages theaters in Washington, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

A Hirschfeld illustration of Gerry Schoenfeld and Bernie Jacobs

It was a beautiful night for closing off the block between Broadway and Eighth. Hundreds, including media and many friends of the theater and many friends of Mrs. Jacobs and Pat and Gerry Schoenfeld congregated before a platform between the two theaters (which are next door to each other).

Hugh Jackman and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness

Two members of the cast of Avenue Q (playing one house down at the Golden) opened the dedication with puppets in the likeness of Schoenfeld and Jacobs, making some historical and hysterical banter about the re-naming of the theaters.

They were followed by Broadway’s new matinee idol Hugh Jackman who delivered an affectionate testimonial to Mr. Schoenfeld. This was followed by a sudden spotlight on the balcony of the Music Box Theater across the way, and Dame Edna in all her spangled and lavendar-tressed glory delivering her priceless bon mots directed at Mr. Schoenfeld, after which the Australian “former housewife/superstar” read a hilarious poem about working for and admiring the Shubert Organization and Mr. S. It was all pure Broadway community.

Dominick Dunne, Casey Ribicoff, Peter Rogers, and Tita Cahn

Shirley Lord Rosenthal and Abe Rosenthal

Dame Edna delivering her speech on the balcony of the Music Box Theater

The crowd on 45th Street

Toni Goodale

Gerry Schoenfeld and Hugh Jackman watching Dame Edna from across the street

The Royale Theatre and Plymouth Theatre minutes before their re-christening as the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre and Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre respectively

The June issue of House & Garden which comes out today, May 10th

NYSD readers may be amused to know that House & Garden Magazine’s June issue (“Design for the well-lived life”) inadvertently features New York Social Diary’s JH in a layout (see below) called Pulling No Punches: Bold patterns, lush textures, overscaled furnishings and eye-popping colors are the hallmarks of a New York apartment decorated by potter and designer Jonathan Adler.”

In the Adler-designed apartment is a large photograph of participants in a horah (raising of the mother of the groom in this case) at the wedding last year of Ariel Lindenbaum and Albert Sebag. JH from the looks of it, can make anyone look light as a feather, so skillful is he at holding up his end (lucky for Mrs. Lindenbaum, and not so incidentally, lucky for New York Social Diary).

Last week the AIDS Care Center of New York Hospital held a special memorial dinner honoring the legacy of designer Bill Blass for his huge contribution to the center both financially and spiritually.

Sirio Maccioni and Casey Ribicoff

In his will, Blass split the bulk of his estate equally between the Metropolitan Museum and the AIDS Care Center -- $23 million each. The Center grew out of Fete de Famille, the fundraiser begun in 1985 by five founding members – Casey Ribicoff, Glenn Bernbaum (whose restaurant Mortimers was the scene of the annual fete), Nancy Kissinger, Judy Peabody and Mr. Blass.

In its lifetime, Fete de Famille raised more than $12 million for the Center (which it started at New York Hospital). Glenn Birnbaum, who died in the late 1990s, left additional millions to the Center. Bill Blass’ bequest more than tripled the original funding. Today, the AIDS Care Center of New York Hospital, which started in a small office now occupies a large suite of rooms in the hospital, and has offices outside of the United States for its work in Europe and Africa.

Last week’s dinner brought together an affectionate group of good old friends of the late designer who was famous within his circle for his enormous generosity, financial and otherwise to his friends as well as the Met, the New York Public Library and the AIDS Care Center.

Robert Liberman with Nancy Kissinger, and Sirio Maccioni

Edward DeLuca, Judy and Sam Peabody with Tom Fallon

Mrs. Robert Ascheim, Dr. Susan Speer, Ronald Janis, and Dr. Robert Ascheim

Polly Espy, Collette Kean, and Dr. John Espy

Helen O'Hagan and Tom Fallon

Dr. John Espy, Judy Peabody, and Dr. Sam Merrick

Sirio Maccioni with Lisa and David Schiff

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Standing, l. to r.: Haresh Tharani, Michael Vollbracht, Dr. Herbert Pardes, Lisa Perry, Dr. Jonathan Jacobs, Casey Ribicoff, Dr. Henry Kissinger, Dr. Robert Ascheim, and Michael Groveman. Seated: Judy Peabody and Nancy Kissinger.