Cold and rainy; Except ...

Driving through Central Park in the rain. 7:05 PM. Photo: JH.

April 15, 2009. That day. Finally. All kinds of opinions erupt from one’s lower consciousness.

Yesterday was a yucky day in New York. Cold and rainy. Except: early Spring nevertheless. Those flowering trees, sweet as they are, lightening up the backdrop, lifting you even if for a nanosecond.

The Subject Was Not Roses. I went down to Joy Ingham’s apartment in the mid-afternoon to attend a meeting with six women working on the City Harvest annual “On Your Plate” luncheon at the Metropolitan Club on May 13th.

What’s notable about this luncheon for me is that they are Quote-Unquote Honoring me. For what? you might ask. So would I. However, the point is to help City Harvest raise more money to get those trucks out there on the road moving and picking up and distributing and feeding our neighbors. New York, remember, is ultimately one big neighborhood. Ask anyone who doesn’t live here.

This is the year, it was decided at this little conclave of seriously thinking people in my friend’s elegant drawing room overlooking Central Park which is just getting ready for its Spring Overture. This is the year to face facts: a lot of people are hurting already. It is significant and not always obvious because hard times doesn’t make anything easier, including ditching your pride. Someone told me yesterday there were three former employees of Bear Stearns who showed up the day before yesterday at a Food Bank in our part of town. And not to volunteer. One in four children in New York is threatened with hunger daily. One out of five goes to bed hungry. Children.

This is the year, it was decided; no time like the present to get the community into confronting and assisting in the problem dilemma.

So they have this lunch every year. I’ve written about it a few times. Someone speaks and is either informative or amusing or both. I take it that’s what’s expected of me which makes me very nervous. However, it’s for the cause and not for my nerves.

If you haven’t received an invitation, please contact:

Susan Bell
Susan Bell Special Events
11 Riverside Drive, Suite 3AW
New York, NY 10023
Ph: 212-874-5457
Fax: 212-496-8432
Email: susanbell@bellevents.com [1]

There’s no excuse if you’d like one. Here it is:

My subject as Honored Speaker will be Society at the Dinner Table (as well as the lunch breakfast and supper) and most of it will be conducted with a Q & A format so people can ask me about people’s private lives and marriages. Gossip is the only confection that you can OD on and never gain an ounce. As if I’d know any. The fear for me in situations like this is that I haven’t got a clue. Sometimes I don’t even know who they’re talking about. Whom, that is.

After the meeting yesterday afternoon, I went over to 22 East 721st Street, between Fifth and Madison, to meet JH to go through the new Kips Bay Show House and photograph.

This block is one of the grandest off Fifth. The Frick Collection occupies half of it on the south side. There is the Horace Trumbauer-designed mansion that was built by a man named Herbert Straus (of the RH Macy family) beginning in 1930. Mr. Straus kept up work to keep the workers working. He died three years later before it was finished, and the completed house went unoccupied for a number of years. Two of its rooms’ paneling, 18th Century French, are now in the Wrightsman Rooms at the Met. The house now belongs to Jeffrey Epstein.

22 East 71Street as it appeared in the 1920s when it was the home of Julius Forstmann and his family, and the house today, currently the stage of the annual Kips Bay Show House.

Across the street is the mansion of the Bill Cosbys. Two houses away is The Kips Bay house, built in 1922 for Julius Forstmann, the textile magnate, designed by C.H.P. Gilbert. Mr. Forstmann died in 1939 and the house soon had institutional owners. More recently it was part of the Salander Art Galleries.

It belongs to real estate owner/developer Aby Rosen and is now on the market represented by Sotheby’s. Mr. Rosen has lent it to the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club for this annual decorators’ exhibition of creative life in New York.

Steve Aronson with pup and Wendy Moonan outside the Kips Bay Show House.

It’s a beautiful house, very large and grand. This is the 37th Annual. More than 30 designers are involved. Also involved is Gloria Vanderbilt, working with Matthew Patrick Smyth (or vice versa), they’ve “recreated” what she calls a Memories and Desire Bedroom, which was the bedroom her aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney decorated for her at 60 Washington Mews (circa 1940) when the artist Gertrude kept a little house just north of the Bohemian life of Greenwich Village when she wanted to work and get away from society.

Gloria recreated this from memory, choosing the fabrics and furniture, including the books she was reading at the time, engraved vanity sets and silver trays with her monogram on them, holding large and small bottles of Chanel No. 5 (still a very new fragrance); along with photographs of the 16-year-old beauty surrounded by a gaggle of preppies. On one side of the silver wall, scrawled (albeit artistically) across in purple were the words: “I fell in love with the room and forever after tried to recapture it ...”

Gloria Vanderbilt.

Gloria Vanderbilt's vanity set and tray with her monogram engraved on the pieces, plus the 16-year-old Gloria with four young men.

The Kips Bay Show House opens to the public on Friday, and runs through Sunday, May 17th. Last night they held the fifth annual black tie President’s Preview & Dinner with a cocktail reception at the Show House, followed by dinner at the Union Club. The irrepressible Mario Buatta and the infinitely eclectic Charlotte Moss were the gala chairmen. Pat Carey was chairman of the Show House.

There are also tickets available for the Gala cocktail tomorrow, Thursday. This includes a preview of the Show House, cocktails at Asprey, and an after party at the legendary late David Barrett's town house. For tickets contact Gina Roa at 718-893-8600 X 245.