 |
|
|
 |
Pigeons
feeding. 6:20 PM. Photo: JH.
|
Today
is the birthday of Peter Duchin, who was born on this planet
quite a few years ago and has remained ever since to make wonderful
music to sing and dance to for the rich, the chic and shameless
along with a lot of other interesting characters, many of whom
he knows or knew well. He shares this anniversary with, among others,
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whom he also knew for most of their
lives, and quite well. They also share this day with the great
film and stage producer David Brown (“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” currently
running on Broadway as well as the greatest summertime movie hit
of all time – Jaws ), among others. A fascinating
variety of talent was also born on this day: Marcel Duchamp,
Senator Bill Bradley, Rudy Vallee, Vida Blue, Georgia Engel, Marilyn
Quayle,
Sally Struthers, Riccardo Muti, Robert Hughes, Jacques d’Amboise,
Vivian Vance, Joe E. Brown, Alice Duer Miller, Beatrix
Potter, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Berkley and Lori
Loughlin.
Tuesday, the 26th was my birthday. I was born on this day 64 years
ago here in New York City. I wondered if it were as hot then as
it was this past Tuesday, because my mother, I was told, walked
ten blocks to the hospital to deliver me. My mother’s brute
strength and pluckiness, it turns out in retrospect, was her saving
grace, and ours, in the years following.
 |
DPC,
Steve Millington, and Barbara Carroll
|
 |
DPC's
birthday fraissier
|
|
I share this birthdate with a number of distinguished (and not
so distinguished) personages several of whom were writers, such
as George Bernard Shaw, Andre Maurois, Robert Graves, Aldous
Huxley, Carl Jung, Serge Koussevitzky, Pearl Buck, George Grosz,
Paul Gallico,
Gracie Allen, Salvador Allende, Jason Robards Jr., Blake Edwards,
Louis Belson, Stanley Kubrick, Mick Jagger, Vitas Gerulaitis, Kevin
Spacey, Sandra Bullock, Dorothy Hamil, Susan George and Kate
Beckinsale.
For my birthday, I went to lunch at Michael’s, creature of
habit that I am, with my friend Barbara Carroll, the jazz piano
virtuoso who celebrated her last birthday at a big bash they gave
for her at Lincoln Center. The only music at my birthday was the
music of the chatter and clatter that fill the room at Michael’s.
At the end of the luncheon, the restaurant’s general manager
Steve Millington surprised me (and it was a surprise) with a small
cake that was actually a fraissier, which I think might be the
French version of the strawberry shortcake. Served cold. Yum. It
was so good, we took a picture. Then on Tuesday evening, I went
with JH and his brother Jason Hirsch (I was their guest) to Scalini
Fedeli, a very posh Italian restaurant in Tribeca, on Duane Street
in the location where the famous first David Boulay restaurant
used to be. And we all ate too much.
Yesterday I went back to Michael’s for a post-birthday lunch
with two young New York women, Liz Finkle and Nina
Richter who
filled my ears with all kinds of wild and woolly stories (later;
some other time) of goings-ons here in New York and Southampton,
although the highlight for them turned out to be meeting the fabulous
former governor of Texas Ann Richards who was lunching with the
music world’s distinguished tycoon, Charles Koppelman. Michael’s
was packed with refugees from the boiling temperatures outside,
including the Daily News’ George Rush who was interviewing
a buxom blonde from the bunny ranch who possibly had wilder and
woollier stories than anything I heard at my table. Also in the
room: Ralph Destino with Faye Wattleton; editor Alice
Mayhew, Stan Shuman, Peter Brown, Gil Schwartz, Denise LeFrak,
Steven Greenberg,
Ashley Schiff, Joan Parker, Dayle Haddon, and hundreds more along
those lines.
Last night JH and I went over to Guastavino’s on 59th Street
between Sutton Place and First Avenue for the Municipal Art Society’s
presentation of the Evangeline Blashfield Award to Susan
K. Freedman.
First, Evangeline Blashfield, one of those names which is now unknown
to the New York of fame and celebrity and yet which made a profound
impact on the cultural life to New York right up to this moment.
Mrs. Blashfield was a civic-minded woman who in 1893 at age 36
rallied a group of influential architects, sculptors and artists
to establish the Municipal Arts Society and to define it as a civic
organization dedicated to this ideal.
 |
Susan
K. Freedman
|
|
She is credited
with creating the Society’s first motto: “To
make us love our city, we must make our city lovely.” Twenty-five
years after the founding of the Municipal Arts Society (which was
just one year before women were given the right to vote), Mrs.
Blashfield was elected to the Society’s board of directors –
its first woman director. She came a long way baby, but it took
the boys long enough, as we can now see. Those days, however, are
gone forever (take note you recidivists).
It was in 1919 that Mrs. Blashfield conceived of and funded the
creation of the mosaic fountain that stands today in front of the
Queensboro Bridge Market. The mosaic, which depicts the allegorical
figure “Abundance,” was designed by another MAS founder,
her husband, Edwin Blashfield. In fact, she was the model for the
figure.
The fountain over which the mosaic is set originally stood on the
southeast side of the bridge. It was relocated to the east end
of the plaza during the 1999 renovation of the present-day Bridgemarket
by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates.
The mosaic had previously languished and was forgotten for many
many years in a storage space under the bridge before it was rescued
in 1990 by Patti Harris who was then executive director of the
New York City Art commission. It was restored in 2002-3 by the
Society’s
Adopt-A-Mural program and rechristened the Evangeline Blashfield
Fountain in 2003.
Susan (or Susie as she calls herself) Freedman was honored last
night for her outstanding contributions to New York City’s
urban landscape.
She’s served as president of the Public
Art Fund since 1986. Under her, the city has seen ambitious and
engaging public art brought to public spaces such as streets, squares
and public places. Monumental installations in Rockefeller Center
by artists such as Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Jonathan
Borofsky to works by emerging artists such as the sculptures of Alejandro
Diaz that are enlivening the Bronx’s Grand Concourse this
summer. |
 |
Inside
Guastavino's
|
Ms.
Freedman is the daughter of the late Doris Chanin Freedman,
a great proponent and supporter of culture in the city who came
to an untimely death early in her life. A friend last night who
knew Mrs. Channin commented that she would have been very proud
of her daughter’s accomplishments and achievements. Ms.
Freedman is known as a fearless public art crusader. She graduated
from Brown in 1982 and began her public service as Director of
Special Projects and Events for the Art Commission under Mayor
Koch in 1983, serving until 1986.
Currently she serves on the board of the MAS, the Eldridge Street Project and
WNYC Radio and is Secretary of the Board for the City Parks Foundation. In addition
she is also Mayor Bloomberg’s rep on the Board of Trustees
at MoMA.
The second floor of the restaurant was filled with
friends, supporters and well-wishers of MAS and Ms.
Freedman last night. These are the people who keep the foundations
of this great metropolis fortified and in shape through thousands
of concealed hours of work. Their work determines much of the personality
and the character of the city as it is seen not only by its citizens
but the millions who visit (and dream of visiting) every year.
They are unsung heroes, truly. |
 |
Looking
east from 59th between 1st and York with the mosaic
of Evangeline
Blashfield |
|
 |
Detail
of the mosaic
|
|
 |
Fred
Papert and
Kitty Hawks |
|
 |
Adrian
Benepe and Joyce Menschel
|
|
 |
Joan
Davidson
|
|
 |
Kent
Barwick and Philip Howard |
|
 |
Diane
Coffey and Jean Tatge
|
|
 |
Paul
Beirne
|
|
 |
Agnes
Gund and Frank Sanchis |
|
 |
Johnny
Moore, Lori Greenberg, and Brendan Sexton
|
|
|
Patti
Harris, Eleanor Gross, and Jessie Zweifach |
|
 |
Peter
Pennoyer, Duane Hampton, and friend
|
|
 |
Kent
Barwick and Billie Tsien |
|
 |
Laura
Walker and Barbara Bantivoglio
|
|
 |
Ellen
Liman
|
|
Subscribe
below to receive emails from NYSD. It's free ...
|
|
Later
in the evening I had dinner at Swifty’s with
old friends from Paris, Rod Coupe and Jimmy
Douglas, two Americans who have
lived in Paris all of their adult lives. We talked about the
autobiography of Alexis, the baron de Rede (see
The
List), and many other figures of that golden post-World War
II time a half century ago. Jimmy who was a very close friend
of Barbara Hutton until he ended their relationship
in 1960, talked about the very end of her life when she was said
to have
died (in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel) with only $3000 to her name,
after spending a near-billion dollar fortune on a trunkloads
of husbands, houses and jewels. Jimmy said last night, “she
had a $15 million dollar ring on her finger when she died and
owned the greatest set of emeralds in the world – hardly
broke.”
Fascinating information passed across the table
to this always interested reporter. More on that later. |
|
|
|
|
