A pumpkin on a park bench. Photo: JH.

City life. Beautiful mild autumn weather in New York yesterday. Lunchtime at Michael’s which was hopping. Joe Armstrong was lunching with the new Paula Zahn who dropped about ten years with her new head of curls. Peter Brown with Warren Hoge, Peter Duchin with Herb Schlosser; Chuck Pfeiffer with Taki and Dominick Dunne – now that must have been some table to listen to; in from the West Coast, Mike Medavoy, Nikki Haskell who was with her bi-coastal neigher Joan Linclau; Jim Mitchell; Barbara Leary and Kim Esteve in from Brazil; Jamie Niven with Katherine Ross; Barbara Liberman; Amy Fine Collins entertaining Bruce Addison and Alex Hitz; Diana Taylor with Barbara Walters; Susan Silver, Laurie Tisch, Don Welch and Amy Rosenbloom with TODAY’s new star Hoda Kolb.

Hoda Kolb and Amy Rosenbloom of the "Today Show" and little Ava, Michael's youngest customer.

The traffic was terrible. There are too many cars (motor vehicles). This not only a matter of fact, it is a matter of alarm: we cannot live with this kind of situation forever. I don’t know what can be done (and maybe the price of oil will do something about it anyway), but Chaos is just around the corner. Then there are the no-turn rules on cross-streets (and some avenues). These serve only to eliminate all choices for drivers of common sense wishing to escape potential traffic chaos. If you’re on 57th Street west of Third Avenue, you cannot get off 57th Street until NINTH AVENUE. Dumb. As in duh. It is a plan that did not work. It should be abandoned. There are other solutions. At Michael’s Jamie Niven was telling me about the Ariane Dandois auction (which was previewed on these pages), a great, great success. There were 800 lots, almost the entire collection from her Paris shop on the rue du Faubourg Saint Honore. The estimate was $12 - $15 million. The final tally was more than twice that $32 million. Ariane Dandois and Ondine de Rothschild at Versailles Madame Dandois has quit the business after 34 years. She was the only woman antiquaire of international stature. She was beautiful, smart, shrewd, clever; the very longtime (25 years) mistress of the late Baron Elie de Rothschild and mother of his daughter, the tall and beautiful Ondine. Ondine was brought up in Paris but went to Princeton. All of those facts easily add up to a story fit for a great novel, if not biography of a modern French woman. Madame Dandois does not seem like the type to write a memoir but she could write a good one. All her adult life she has evoked conversation and speculation; a romantic character if there ever was one. And a smart businesswoman.  When she decided to sell, instead of doing it in Europe, she wanted to sell in America where 80% of her current clients are from. She got Sotheby’s to hire Juan-Pablo Molyneux decorate her exhibition. She used the money they budget for starry champagne previews to accomplish this. She wanted to impress the public in general, not just the champagne crowd who already knew her. Linda Stein was murdered yesterday in her penthouse apartment at 965 Fifth Avenue between 77th and 78th Streets. Linda was a New York celebrity, a dynamic personality that could easily have fit in a novel, like Madame Dandois. Except now it would be a murder mystery and a tragedy. Linda was a real estate agent with a large big name show business clientele and a big life. She was very connected personally and a celebrity in the world of celebrity. Long before she’d been married to a major music industry manager Seymour Stein. They had two daughters who are now grown. Linda Stein with Evelyn Lauder She was a very nice woman with a lot of friends who had a lot of affection for her. She’d suffered from breast cancer several years ago and she was vigilant about looking after herself. Recently there had been a scare again. She was very good company; a hip, warm and funny raconteur. She knew people. And she knew about people. Real estate people, especially the very successful ones in New York, are like that: they know their clientele, they know the score. Linda was famous for her celebrity. Madonna. More recently Angelina Jolie; that strata. Elton John was a longtime friend. She these people, and their management people, and the media and the movie and record executives who created them and looked after them. She lived alone in a one-bedroom penthouse co-op in a building known for its security. That means that the staff doesn’t miss much in terms of who’s coming and going. Fifth Avenue buildings are like vaults when it comes to security. So are many others in the high rent/maintenance axis. Although there’s often construction and maintenance going on in these high-end buildings. Her daughter, who had been unable to reach her by phone, found her in a pool of blood. She was wearing a hooded pullover she always wore when she went out for her exercise walk in the Park across the street. She was 62. A lot of women who live alone in Manhattan would sleep easier if they knew Linda Stein knew her murderer. But they don’t know that yet. City Life; New York New York. Tuesday night at Cipriani, the New York Landmarks Conservancy held its 14th annual Living Landmarks Gala honoring John Whitehead, Jessye Norman, Gerry Schoenfeld, Mica Ertegun, Oscar de la Renta, and Lauren Bacall. Liz Smith emcees this show – and it is a great show – and I’m not sure just how much she has to do with it but I’ll bet it’s a lot. Because it’s her party and she conducts it in her brilliant citified down-home manner so that everyone feels welcome, has a lot of fun and a lot of laughs, as there were a lot of those on Tuesday night. Liz also co-chaired the event with Barry Diller and Diane von Furstenberg and Howard Rubenstein (all former “Living Landmarks”). Peter Duchin (also former “Living Landmark”) provided the music for the evening. The Landmarks Conservancy is headed by the beautiful Peg Breen. It was founded in 1973 with a commitment to “preserving, restoring and reusing architecturally significant buildings throughout New York. Since its founding, NYLC has provided more than $35 million in grants and low-interest loans as well as technical consultation to owners of historic homes, businesses, schools, houses of worship, theaters, cultural institutions, affordable housing units and community centers. There are so many beautiful old buildings that you see and admire around the city that are there because of the Landmarks Conservancy. Peg Breen told me that on Tuesday with 550 guests they raised about $750,000.

Patty LuPone sings a special rendition of "Everything's Comin' Up Roses" for Gerry Schoenfeld.

It brought out a big crowd of the New York social and cultural life, and former Living Landmarks, including Helen Gurley Brown, Barbara Cook, Douglas Durst, Toni and Jim Goodale, Louise Grunwald A. E. Hotchner, Elaine Kaufman, Commissioner Ray Kelly, Sidney Lumet, Marshall Rose and Candice Bergen, Stephen Ross, Frank Sciame Jr., Sir Howard Stringer, Elaine Stritch, Mike and Mary Wallace, Bob Colacello, Peggy Siegal, Roberto and Joanne de Guardiola, Guy Robinson and Elizabeth Striblng, Lynn Nesbit, Annette de la Renta, her daughter and son-in-law Eliza and Alex Bolen, Casey Ribicoff, Linda Wachner, Bunny Williams, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Mildred Brinn, Anna Wintour, Andre Leon Tally, Doug Cramer, Antoinette Guerini-Maraldi, Marife Hernandez and Joel Bell, Sharon Hoge, Roberto and Joanne de Guardiola, Barbara and Donald Tober, Grace and Chris Meigher, David Beer, Duane Hampton, Pat Shoenfeld, Judy Auchincloss, Joni Evans, Peter Rogers, Peggy Noonan, Billy Norwich. But the show was on the stage where Peter Duchin played, where Liz and he sang a combination of Noel Coward and Cole Porter’s lyrics to Porter’s “Let’s Fly Away” (To a place that’s warm and tropic, Where Mother Nature’s not the topic, all the live long day ...). Jessye Norman, after accepting her award (an engraved Cartier silver plate), gave us a quick and fabulous rendition of “New York, New York.” Then when Gerry Schoenfeld received his award, Patti LuPone came up and gave him (and us) a wowser version of “Everything’s Coming Up Roses ... ” (Everything’s coming up Gerry ...). Anna Wintour  and Andre Leon Talley delivered together the tribute to Oscar de la Renta. Ms. Wintour, the thought-to-be model for the main character in “The Devil Wears Prada” looked entirely chic and fashionable in her Oscar and her impeccable coif and her voice, with its now Americanized English boarding schoolgirl accent, shook just-slightly-schoolgirl uneasily as she read her part of the tribute to Oscar. Then Nathan Lane went up onstage to pay tribute to Lauren Bacall. Although Miss Bacall is a legendary film star thanks to her Hollywood years and her marriage to Humphrey Bogart, to New Yorkers she is a musical and comedy star of the theater, as Broadway as her late great friends Comden and Green and the Shuberts. Off-stage if you were to run into her as a stranger, she’s not exactly the friendliest girl in town. She can be a little on grumpy-side, harrumph, or at least seem so.

Clockwise from left: Beth DeWoody and John Whitehead; Jessye Norman; Gerald Schoenfeld; Mica Ertegun; Lauren Bacall.

However, if, like Nathan Lane, you know her; and if, like Nathan Lane, you’re really funny, you can, like Nathan Lane on Tuesday night, have her practically rolling in the aisles with laughter. His comments about her, her career, her personality and the world’s response to it brought down the house. He is such a funny guy as a stand-up that the entire crowd was roaring. I have only one regret and that is that I couldn’t have video’d it (I couldn’t get the damn camera to work on time) because it was a real “laff-riot” and a gem that should have been preserved like the landmark. Miss Bacall gave that legendary magic and that legendary voice to the audience on acceptance, telling them that she’d grown up in New York, walked around much of the town as a kid looking and learning. She talked about how much it’s changed, how she’s lived in a landmark now for more than forty years, loves the city, loves the old buildings, doesn’t love most of the new ones; and she besought everyone to do what they could to stop the tearing down any more of the old ones. Lane-Bacall were the eleven o’clock number of a great show, this 14th annual Living Landmarks, and thanks to Ms. Liz, a demonstration of the old Broadway maxim: always leave ‘em laughing. And so they did, maybe more than ever before.

Linda Wachner, Nina and Murat Koprulu, and Lynn Nesbit

Pat Patterson, Duane Hampton, and Edward Lee Cave

Sharon Hoge

Roddy and April Gow

Carl Lana and Beth DeWoody

Gerry Schoenfeld with Mary and Mike Wallace

Peg Breen

Marife Hernandez

Barbara Tober, Marife Hernandez, and Joel Bell

Lynn Nesbit and Oscar de la Renta

Peggy Siegal and Bob Colacello

Louise Grunwald and Peter Rogers

Toni Goodale and Bunny Williams

Doug Cramer and Antoinette Guerini-Maraldi

Phoebe Eaton

Grace Meigher with Sylvester and Gillian Miniter

Dominick Dunne

Nathan Lane and Lauren Bacall

Beth DeWoody and John Whitehead

Andre Leon Talley, Anna Wintour, and Oscar de la Renta

Gail Gilbert, Lee Link, and Bunny Williams

Peggy Noonan, Bob Perkins, and Joni Evans

Andre Leon Talley, Casey Ribicoff, and Mica Ertegun

Arnold Scaasi and Jessye Norman

Arnold Scaasi and Marie Brenner

Billy Norwich and Peggy Siegal

Liz Smith and Bob Perkins

Grace Meigher and Liz Smith

Cynthia Phipps died last week in her Park Avenue apartment. She was fifty-eight and  had been very ill with lung cancer for more than two years. She was intrepid in fighting and enduring it and never complained. Although she was very wealthy, she lived without live-in staff, as she preferred it. On Wednesday morning last week, she was heating some water on the stove for tea when somehow her robe caught fire. Because she was alone at the time, what happened after that is not quite certain. But her maid who arrived shortly thereafter found her unconscious on the kitchen floor, with burns over much of her body. Cynthia died shortly thereafter in the hospital. She was a child of another kind of Society that is now a precious memory. She was the daughter of Ogden and Lillian Bostwick Phipps and a great-granddaughter of Henry Phipps who was Andrew Carnegie’s partner in Carnegie Steel, and second largest stockholder in the company when it was acquired by J. Pierpont Morgan and partners in the early part of the 20th century to create U.S. Steel. Cynthia had a brother Ogden (“Dinny”) Phipps, and two sisters, Florence Chase and Lily Pulitzer Rousseau. Although it was a word that she wouldn’t have related to, Cynthia was an authentic aristocrat in the classic American sense -- an heiress to a century old fortune, bred in a world of private schools, family mansions (she inherited her mother and father’s house on Long Island), country estates, racing stables and a hardy life of sportsmanship. There was absolutely no pretense about her. She was kind, and she was friendly; although she did not suffer fools gladly. She was old school; the arrogance that is often associated with wealth and is especially evident in contemporary metropolitan life was not present within Cynthia. She was a lady. She had lots of friends, longtime friends. She divided her life between town and country. She was an excellent squash player, horsewoman, lover of animals and a great supporter of the Animal Medical Center. Her passing is a great loss for that institution as well as all the friends and familiy who loved her dearly.

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