PREVIEW: It Happened Here by Lesley M.M. Blume

It Happened Here

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le sley m. m. blume

a s a n e r a of electronic books begins, Thornwillow embarks on its libretto series, dedicated to the belief that physical books– tangible, aehetically pleasing, letterpress printed and beautifully bound–have a new and even more important place in our lives: as repositories of permanence in an increasingly ephemeral world of letters. The series will regularly feature the work of celebrated writers–both eablished greats and dazzling up-and-comers – of ion and non-ion, from prose to poetry.

The Thornwillow Libretto: A growing colleion of voices commemorating our times for times to come.

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this edi t ion wa s publ ished u nder the patronage of

It Happened Here lesley m. m. blume

It Happened Here

ď “ lesley m. m. blume

thor n w i ll ow pr e s s 2011

With special thanks to Louie Rodopoulos, Paul H. F. Nash, Richard Blodgett, Michael Shnayerson, Luke Ives Pontifell & Slater Gillin. l mmb

copy r ight Š 2 0 1 1 by le sley m. m. blume

It Happened Here i. how to le ar n a hotel

T

o k now a hotel l ik e the St. Regis, to know it truly, you have to experience it late at night. Not at midnight, when gues ill whirl through the front doors and dot the hallways. At midnight, people are ill doing all of the talking, and the voice of the hotel itself cannot be heard over this din. Midnight nds ladies returning barefoot from evenings out on the town, grasping high heels in their hands; men come back and immediately loosen the ties around their necks ju enough to gulp down air and feel free again; waiters ill scurry from floor to floor, colleing discarded silver dinner trays that lie ravaged outside closed doors. The ravagers of the trays lie sated behind those doors in their rooms; at this hour, they are only ju driing o, bathed in the flickering light of television. Or perhaps they’re up to something more amorous. So, you have to wait until later, when the noise from all of these people has quieted to a whisper, and then to so, even breathing. To learn this hotel and any other, you 

have to wait until the lonely hours of the night.

Mo witnesses to the lonely hours are accidental ones. Usually they have no choice. If you ju happen to be privy to the lonely hours, you’re likely fending o a bout of jetlag, or worse, common old insomnia. What right does common old insomnia have to infringe on your travels? It should have been le at home with other squalid commonplace cares, like overdue bills or sulky piles of laundry. But before you grow too tful or too indignant about this tagalong gue, recognize this: here, in this city, with its landscape of endless possibility and slippery slopes, insomnia is your ally. Your senses heightened and lopsided, you are suddenly privy. And perhaps you will realize that you are not alone in that liless ate at all, that the hotel itself is there too: it is wide awake, and it is revealing itself to you for the r time. This sort of building smolders with a vitality that other buildings do not, because like some of its temporary inhabitants, it never sleeps, and it knows too much. The older it is, the more it knows.

Elevators churn up and down the hotel’s spine, like arteries carrying blood through a body; at night, and especially during the lonely hours, you 

can nally hear and feel that pulse. Wander the St. Regis’s century-old corridors and you will feel the hiory throbbing in the silent corners and airwells: kings have walked here; so have tycoons and presidents and all of their scrambling courtiers. In an empty ballroom lie the remnants of a decadent fea: rumpled tablecloths ained with red wine and scattered with silver; dutiful centerpiece tulips droop their heads now that their duties have been completed. Not so long ago, rumpled corsages would have littered the floor; before that, there would have been wilted nosegays.

Stand outside the hotel kitchen–that unfathomable, eamy operation which turned out that fea and thousands of others–and you will likely hear lonely hour radio music driing out from behind the doors. The building may creak in the wind or ju sigh for no reason. This is its right.

The bottom line: you might not underand the language of this hotel, but it will talk all the same, because it has seen so much and has so much to tell you.

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i i. a certa i n a stor iron y

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f you h a d str ag gled into Egypt’s valleys during your 19 th century grand tour, you would have ood in slack-jawed awe before the wondrous Sphinx and pyramids of Giza. During that same period, had you made your way to the harbors of New York City, you likely would have similarly rhapsodized about the palatial hotels being ereed there. Among the mo prominent was Aor House, built in 1 83 6 by Aor clan founding patriarch John Jacob Aor, whose r fortune was made from fur and his second from preternaturally aute real eate invements. Located on Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Streets and boaing a Medici-level of extravagance, the hotel was inantly regarded as a “marvel of the age.” Here, along with other similarly grand eablishments across the country, ood America’s answer to the great houses, cales, monuments, and churches of Europe. These new temples, however, worshipped dierent deities: inead of God and landed ariocracy, the hotels paid homage to a rather uppity– even rude – rain 

of unbridled commerce particular to the country that had birthed them.

Along with the trappings of old-world glamour, the eablishments boaed aggering technological advances. A legion of waiters, drilled “like a regiment of soldiers,” served dinners laden “with all the delicacies of the season,” recalled one visitor, but more importantly, Aor House had its own eam engine and gas plant, capable of pumping hot water from artesian wells all the way to the top floor. Praically unheard of at the time, this innovation and others like it beowed unprecedented luxury upon amazed hotel gues.

Six decades later, a new generation of Aors debuted another, even more unning marvel.

The formidable Waldorf-Aoria hotel was built in 1 8 9 7 by two feuding Aors–William Waldorf Aor and John Jacob “Jack” Aor IV–who conceived the proje in a rare moment of détente.

These cousins owned adjoining lots on Fih Avenue and 33rd Street, and agreed to ere separate-yet-linked buildings to create the massive ruure. Out of sheer spite, Jack briefly considered putting inking ables next to William’s   

part of the hotel; at the la minute, however, the lure of a good business opportunity triumphed over peevishness.

Inantly regarded as the mo luxurious hotel in the world, the Waldorf-Aoria was “a new thing under the sun… a gorgeous golden blur, a paradise peopled with unmiakable American shapes,” declared author Henry James in his travel book, The American Scene. This “golden blur” was a clear symbol that the Aor dynay had reached the 2 . 0 age: the family was now worth an unfathomable $ 2 0 0 million; the property on which the hotel ood had appreciated a thousand times since falling into the Aor dominion. On display was the full might of the robber baron; the Waldorf-Aoria shone as America’s Versailles.

The latter had the Hall of Mirrors; the former had Peacock Alley. Plus, the Waldorf had something that Marie Antoinette had never enjoyed: the flush toilet.

Such hotels began to reitch the city’s social fabric. The comparative democracy of access brought down certain walls: these were Edens to which any soul could be admitted, for a price;

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anyone could be a pampered royal for a day; anyone could see and be seen. Those who couldn’t aord to lodge there could at lea sip tea under a palm court tree and gape at the scene; these grand hotels became regarded as “palaces for the people.” As one hiorian of the phenomenon has noted, “[Here] was a va, glittering, iridescent fantasy that had been conjured up to infe millions of plain Americans with a new idea–the aspiration to lead an expensive, gregarious life as publicly as possible.” Legions of plain Americans promptly partook in this gilt fantasy. Presidential candidacies were made or broken during meetings within grand hotel labyrinths; groundbreaking architeure and décor was showcased by the country’s foremo artisans. Yet sadly, even among the once-gobsmackingly impressive Aor properties, few ill and today. Nearly a century aer it was built, the Aor House found itself too far downtown to remain fashionable; it fell to the wrecking ball in 19 2 6 to make way for more protable ventures. The Waldorf-Aoria met a similar fate, and the Empire State Building now lords over the lot where the hotel ood.

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w h a t d o Sa lvador Da l i, A l f red Hitchcock, and Diana Vreeland have in common? They all created, reveled and rebelled at the St. Regis. It Happened Here, a convivial, social and artiic hiory of old New York, as seen through the prism of one of its grandest hotels.

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le sley m. m. blume is an author and journali based in New York City. Her latest book, Let’s Bring Back, was published by Chronicle Books in .

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ple a se l ook for other Thornwillow Libretti by Louis Begley, Harry Belafonte, Jonathan Galassi, Peter Matthiessen, Stacy Schiff, Jeffrey Pogash and other celebrated artis and writers. thor n w i ll ow.com