The Colony Club designed by Delano & Aldrich c. 1916 at Park Avenue and East 62nd Street in New York City. The club moved to this location from their home on Madison Avenue and East 30th seen HERE. Click HERE for more on the Colony Club and HERE to see the building on google street view.
8 comments:
Naturally, I'd like to see The Colony Club outlast CORE:club and its ilk. But I wonder if it will. Today's rich are very different from their counterparts a century ago -- perhaps even twenty-five years ago -- and the women most of all. Particularly in Manhattan.
(I remember the hushed conversations back in the early Eighties on how to get von Bulow's mistress to resign her Colony membership. Would something like that happen at CORE today? I doubt it.)
OFF-TOPIC (mostly) --
For those of you interested in what the social world was like when these old houses were new, I recommend the short autobiography linked below, which begins with an anecdote about a luncheon at the original Colony Club building.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6500/6500-h/6500-h.htm
I love the work of Delano & Aldrich but they couldn't out do the original club building nor the replacement for the double mansions that they replaced by MMW firm for the Union Club
Magnus, even up here on the staid old coast of Maine, I'd hazard that the rich are very different from 25 years ago---even 10 years ago. The old walls and habits of the previous century are definitely being stretched.
The guest bedrooms are not furnished deluxe decor, but come at a reasonable rate. An out-of-town friend once had the room with the oval window in the pediment above the entrance. It is practically deserted during the summer, but lunch under the awning on the rooftop terrace in the Spring is a treat.
Much prefer both the Union Club and D&A's Colony Club on Park Ave. Both good looking, well planned and nicely organized large scale buildings.
My two cents; I think there was something to be said when society had strict rules, formalities and severe consequences which were respected. (I've always loved the idea of the Amish and Mormons shunning their outcasts). Forget Von Bulow's mistress. Today's lax attitude has created idols like Paris Hilton and Kardashian whose basic claim to fame has been starring in their own sex tapes. I bet they both could easily sit down for lunch in any prim and proper club in NYC and have mothers ask for their autographs so they can give them to their own twelve year old daughters. Times do change.
The interiors are far less imaginative or interesting than D&A's Union or Knickerbocker Clubs for some reason. Costs? Client dictate?
As a decorator I have advised on the decoration of the Knickerbocker, Union and the Colony Clubs. The rooms at the Colony have beautiful scale and call for more interior decoration--handsome carpets, furniture and curtains. There is more architectural detail in the other two club house interiors so they look better in the archival photography. However, for example the loggia at the Colony Club, with its beautiful murals, out ranks any room at the Knickerbocker Club and rivals the rooms at the Union. The Colony's Ballroom suite with its contiguous reception rooms, grooms room, and ante room (and the large and small ballrooms , which Peter Pennoyer and I helped restore are some of the most handsome reception rooms in the city.
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