The St. Regis Hotel opens its doors
along with a number of other seamen's hotels in Manhattan in 1904 and at the turn of the century:
The former Holland Hotel, 396-397 West Street at Tenth Street, architect Charles Stegmayer, opened in 1904 and once home to Peter Rabbit's, a Club and Disco known for its Sunday Tea Dances. Along with the Great Eastern Hotel at 180 Christopher, the dignified Neo-classical Keller Hotel at 384-385 West Street, and the former American Seamen's Friend Society Hotel at 113-115 Jane Street, the Holland is typical of the working waterfront and maritime structures of the far west side of New York City's Greenwich Village.
1.) My neighbor downstairs traded me my stack of Vanity Fairs for her stack of Architectural Digests so I found out in the issue with Ralph and Ricky Lauren on the cover [November] that The St. Regis -- "a 1904 Beaux Arts landmark in the heart of midtown Manhattan" with its "famous Maxfield Parrish mural" in the Bar -- "has undergone a glamorous redesign at the hands of" two very handsome and talented designers who don't need me to promote their work.
2.) As I always enjoy looking at the opulent and vacant interiors of the rich and famous, I was momentarily taken aback by the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. L. on the cover (people live here?), but the article on the St. Regis reminded me of all the great hotels I've spent time in and even paid the overnight rate, and as an architectural historian once pointed out, the undulating arches and rounded corner entrance of the Holland reflects the lapping waters of the nearby Hudson River, as does the corner beacon tower of the Seamen's Friend's (aka Jane Street Hotel) which sort of resembles a lighthouse, and how appropriate too since a friend who lived there once long ago (a writer whose fiction appeared in magazines such as STH and First Hand) told me that the Jane and possibly the Holland and Keller's opened their doors to the survivors of the Titanic when they were brought by seaworthy vessels to the (once crumbling) docks and piers at the bottom of Christopher Street which piers we used to visit (this fiction writer and I), but which survivors would not have included John Jacob Astor IV who built the St. Regis and went down with the ship and its captain and band who kept playing, Jack Astor being at the time 48 years old and leaving behind a 19 year old widow.
3.) Félix Fénéon (and thank you again to R. for é!) was a French writer and art critic and anarchist who composed some 1220 three-line entries for the faits divers column -- "known as chiens écrasés ('run-over dogs')" items -- for the newspaper Le Matin, for the year 1906, now translated by Luc Sante and collected in "Novels in Three Lines" [see yesterday's post], and although I suspect without having yet received my copy that the lines Fénéon created were doubtless more succinct than mine, my defense is that 1904 is in certain respects a more complicated year (think of all the hotel building going on!) and thus requires more words, but I'm working on it, so give me time.
The former Holland Hotel, 396-397 West Street at Tenth Street, architect Charles Stegmayer, opened in 1904 and once home to Peter Rabbit's, a Club and Disco known for its Sunday Tea Dances. Along with the Great Eastern Hotel at 180 Christopher, the dignified Neo-classical Keller Hotel at 384-385 West Street, and the former American Seamen's Friend Society Hotel at 113-115 Jane Street, the Holland is typical of the working waterfront and maritime structures of the far west side of New York City's Greenwich Village.1.) My neighbor downstairs traded me my stack of Vanity Fairs for her stack of Architectural Digests so I found out in the issue with Ralph and Ricky Lauren on the cover [November] that The St. Regis -- "a 1904 Beaux Arts landmark in the heart of midtown Manhattan" with its "famous Maxfield Parrish mural" in the Bar -- "has undergone a glamorous redesign at the hands of" two very handsome and talented designers who don't need me to promote their work.
2.) As I always enjoy looking at the opulent and vacant interiors of the rich and famous, I was momentarily taken aback by the appearance of Mr. and Mrs. L. on the cover (people live here?), but the article on the St. Regis reminded me of all the great hotels I've spent time in and even paid the overnight rate, and as an architectural historian once pointed out, the undulating arches and rounded corner entrance of the Holland reflects the lapping waters of the nearby Hudson River, as does the corner beacon tower of the Seamen's Friend's (aka Jane Street Hotel) which sort of resembles a lighthouse, and how appropriate too since a friend who lived there once long ago (a writer whose fiction appeared in magazines such as STH and First Hand) told me that the Jane and possibly the Holland and Keller's opened their doors to the survivors of the Titanic when they were brought by seaworthy vessels to the (once crumbling) docks and piers at the bottom of Christopher Street which piers we used to visit (this fiction writer and I), but which survivors would not have included John Jacob Astor IV who built the St. Regis and went down with the ship and its captain and band who kept playing, Jack Astor being at the time 48 years old and leaving behind a 19 year old widow.
3.) Félix Fénéon (and thank you again to R. for é!) was a French writer and art critic and anarchist who composed some 1220 three-line entries for the faits divers column -- "known as chiens écrasés ('run-over dogs')" items -- for the newspaper Le Matin, for the year 1906, now translated by Luc Sante and collected in "Novels in Three Lines" [see yesterday's post], and although I suspect without having yet received my copy that the lines Fénéon created were doubtless more succinct than mine, my defense is that 1904 is in certain respects a more complicated year (think of all the hotel building going on!) and thus requires more words, but I'm working on it, so give me time.
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