D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A tended membership to women and, in 2010, they voted in their first woman president. Today, they have many events for their members. The Grille Room is a very popular dining and lunching spot for members and their families and friends. I have to say: When you’re present in the clubhouse— whether for a large reception and dinner, or for meeting a friend for an late afternoon tea or cocktail—the atmosphere is what the founders sought. It is “more inclusive, more comfortable…and more enjoyable” than any other, especially when all of the above are brought together, as they were for Stella’s “State Dinner.”
On that same night, over on the northwest corner of Park Avenue and 62nd Street, they were celebrating the 100th anniversary of the opening of the clubhouse designed by Delano and Aldrich for The Colony Club, which is thought by many to be the premiere women’s club in America. It was definitely the first women’s club in New York, and its founding is at the root of what became the Feminist Movement or the Women’s Liberation Movement (which emerged enormously a half century after this club’s founding). Anne Tracy Morgan, the youngest daughter of J. Pierpont Morgan, was a major
force behind The Colony Club. A young woman in her late 20s, she lived at home in the family mansion on 35th Street and Madison Avenue. She often traveled abroad with her father on his yacht. There were always others in their party, including his mistress, Adelaide Douglas. Anne provided the cover, as it were, the “beard” for her father (although his extramarital alliances were not a secret in his world). He was a man who loved the company of women. Nevertheless, it was an age where appearances counted as much as facts. On February 7, 1901—115 years ago last month—Anne’s life suddenly changed: she met
Elisabeth Marbury. Known by everyone as “Bessie,” she was a very prominent and powerful international literary agent and theatrical producer. It sounds like their meeting was a coup de foudre, although I wouldn’t know obviously. Marbury lived in a domestic partnership with Elsie de Wolfe, an actress and a budding interior decorator at a time when the profession was regarded as a solely a man’s business. Marbury and de Wolfe entertained famously, salon-like, in their brick townhouse on Irving Place. Among the guests—literary, artistic, and theatrical—were not a few of the men about town, including Jack Astor (Vincent
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