Art Deco Anomaly in East Hampton

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE HOUSES you just want to pick up and put down in a different spot.

It’s an impeccable c. 1930 Bauhaus-style cottage that looks like it belongs, by rights, in the back streets of Miami Beach. Instead, it’s in the Village of East Hampton, where cedar shingles are more the rule.

It’s on the market for 749K, which is a bundle, considering it’s tiny (600 sq. ft.), on a small lot, and (this is the pity part) right across the street from the railroad station.

Still, it’s so cute, inside and out — and unspoiled — I just had to share it with you.

For details and more pics, go here.

Here at the New Yorker

I’M ON THE 31st FLOOR of a classic  Art Deco building in midtown Manhattan. From the window of my small but plush room at the New Yorker Hotel, I look down on water tanks and roof terraces and Garment District loft buildings, and feel I am really in the heart of an old city. The hotel opened in 1930, in between the Chrysler (1929) and Empire State (1931) Buildings (imagine the excitement of that time!) Both are visible from my window, but there’s very little in the way of later glass boxes. Looking directly due east from 8th Avenue, it’s almost as if the last 75 years never happened.

The original architecture lives on here, most majestically in the lobby, but also in the halls’ original ceiling fixtures and signage, and even the doors and moldings in the guest rooms. The porcelain tub, with its X-shaped chrome faucet handles, reminds me of my grandmother’s 1940s bathroom in Rego Park.

Renovated last year to the tune of $70 million and now operated by Ramada, the hotel is well past its heyday, when all the Big Bands and the likes of Joe DiMaggio wouldn’t stay anyplace else.

On this muggy, uninspiring day, there were tourists from Europe and Japan and American families thronging the lobby and elevators and the hotel’s Tick Tock Diner. Expedia.com has my room, a City View with queen bed, listed at $149/night this week.

I’m not enchanted with the mobs in midtown and I personally resent the ugliness of nearby Madison Square Garden and all that surrounds it, but I’m glad to be here. I’ve always been curious about what’s inside this 43-story Art Deco pile with the red neon letters that dates back to the days when travelers walked underground from Penn Station through a series of tunnels to emerge here in the grand lobby, still dominated by an astonishing chandelier.

A traveler could do worse.

From a hotel press release:

Situated in Manhattan at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, The New Yorker Hotel was the largest hotel in New York when it opened in 1930 rising 43 stories and comprised of one million square feet. The New Yorker Hotel featured 2,500 guestrooms, two grand ballrooms, 10 private dining “salons” and five restaurants that employed 35 master cooks. The barber shop was one of the largest in the world with 42 chairs and 20 manicurists. There were 92 telephone operators and 150 laundry staff who washed 350,000 items daily. This was all supported by America’s largest private power plant located in the sub-basements of the property. When it was erected in 1929, the hotel cost $20 million to be constructed.
With the arrival of the “Big Bands,” the stage was set for the ‘heyday’ of The New Yorker Hotel. Society’s elite as well as political figures, business leaders, business travelers and tourists all gathered at the hotel to listen to entertainment from famous musicians including Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. The Brooklyn Dodgers and manager Leo Durocher chose The New Yorker Hotel as its headquarters during the 1941 World Series. New York Yankees great Joe DiMaggio once lived at the hotel when rehabilitating an injury during the baseball season.
The New Yorker Hotel was the epitome of luxury and first-class service when it opened. Guests were greeted by hotel bellman when they arrived at Pennsylvania Station on the B & O railroad and were guided through underground tunnels to the hotel’s grand lobby. Staff members were always on hand to meet the needs of its guests.

Glitteryardi: Yard Sales of the East End

I’D HEARD ABOUT EAST HAMPTON’S FAMOUS YARD SALES. “You’ll find everything you need,” people said.

What I need: a loveseat/bench for the front deck; a bench for the front hall; a night table and lamp for the guest room. Maybe some salad servers. Sofa cushions, but I’m not going to find them at a yard sale.

Nothing else!! I’m made of steel when it comes to resisting unnecessary crap.

But I did want to check out some local yard sales, just for the fun of it. I knew enough to pick up a copy of the East Hampton Star on Friday, with its two columns of nothing but Yard Sales, and planned a route for Saturday morning, salivating against my better judgement over ads for “Full basement” (I have a couple of full basements myself, that’s the sickness of it) and “Top drawer stuff!”(always a subjective matter, never more so than when it comes to yard sales).

These Hamptons people start early. In Brooklyn, nothing happens on the stoop/tag/yard sale front till 10AM. Here they start at 8, 8:30, or 9 — and even then, as my friend Nancy and I discovered at 7:55 this morning, pulling up in front of our first-ever East Hampton yard sale, “No early birds” don’t mean sh*t.

Everywhere we went — and we hit half a dozen sales in Springs, East Hampton, and Amagansett — there were at least ten cars parked, and people walking out with plants, pottery, towels, picture frames, and generally high-quality domestic flotsam and jetsam.

The strangest sale, in Northwest Woods, required us to walk up a long curved gravel driveway to an ersatz chateau, above, landscaped to perfection, where in the garage behind the (just guessing) $15 million dollar manse, we found the best bargains of the day. $2 was the going price for art books (I got one on Jackson Pollock and a photography book), $25 each for low-slung canvas deck chairs (good for around the pool – that’s why I didn’t buy them: no pool). There was an antique marble washstand for $25, but we couldn’t conceive of moving it, and lamps from $5-12, but none that spoke to me.

Next, we visited an arty-looking ’70s house of vertical cedar boards, above, owned by a chic woman who had the greatest shoes in the world – unfortunately, not my size. I was idly looking at two framed Art Deco prints (women’s heads, quite pretty, but did I need them? Hell, no!) marked $15, and idly wondering if that was for one or both, when she said, “You like them. Take them for $2.” I really didn’t want them, but for $2 I couldn’t resist.

So I pulled out two dollar bills and handed them to her. Moments later, her friend came over and said, “You’re selling your birthday presents? Even the ones I got in a very good antique store up in Buffalo and carried down just for you?” Meaning those prints. She turned to me. “He’s really hurt. Can I buy them back?” She thrust the two dollars back at me, at which point the friend realized she had not only sold them, but sold them for two bucks.

His face fell, but he tried to joke it off, saying (of me) “Now she wants $25 for them.” In the end, they insisted I keep them, even though, as I said, I didn’t care. They’re in fine condition and look good on a shelf in my bedroom, so that was a decent score (maybe after I get them re-matted, I’ll upgrade that to ‘incredible’ score).

Then it was on to Amagansett and the fabled Domino magazine ex-editors’ second sell-off of swag, i.e. photo-shoot props, above and below (the first was in the West Village May 9). Today, according to an article in the Star, they were joined by others from the fashion and design industries, hoping to “unload some of the excess they accumulated during the boom years.” (Now is this really their stuff to sell? I’ve sold a few review copies of books to the Strand in my time, but it seems a bit bizarre that these substantial pieces of upholstered furniture and designer clothes were never returned to the retailers/manufacturers/PR reps, and that no attempt was apparently made to offer at least a token amount of the proceeds of these sales to some cause or charity.)

There, next to a cottage on the Montauk Highway, was a mob scene. I lost interest after I was told the one thing that would have worked for me (a wooden bench) was not for sale. As for the advertised “bargain basement prices,” ha! It seemed as though just about everything, including a brass standing lamp and a small, glass-topped wrought iron table, was marked $425.