- For the restaurant in London, see Colony (restaurant)
The Colony was a restaurant in New York City known as a meeting place of café society. It founded in 1919 by Joseph L. Pani, who sold it to its employees in 1922. It closed in 1971. It was located on Sixty-first Street, off Madison Avenue.
Video The Colony (restaurant)
History
The Colony was founded by Joseph Pani, who later sold it to his employees Ernest Cerutti, Alfred Hartmann, and Gene Cavallero, Sr. At first, it was known for attracting playboys trolling for dates with its upstairs gambling club where men could meet their mistresses, but after Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt discovered it, it became the fashionable haunt of New York high society.
Mayor Jimmy Walker's victory celebration was held at the Colony in 1925. The Colony served liquor during prohibition, serving it in cups rather than glasses, and keeping its liquor in a service elevator where it could easily be moved, though Mayor Walker protected the restaurant from raids.
The Colony installed air conditioning in the late 1920s, the first restaurant in New York to have it; it was also the first in the U.S. to serve Dom Pérignon champagne.
Among its famous customers were Reginald Vanderbilt, Gloria Vanderbilt, Russell Ryder, Preston Sturges, Mike Todd, Fulco di Verdura, Hattie Carnegie, Carmel Snow, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Cordelia Biddle Robertson, Mr. and Mrs. Rhinelander Stewart, Elsie de Wolfe, Groucho Marx, Mrs. Irving Berlin, Millicent Rogers, Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Betsey Whitney, George Vanderbilt, Lulu Vanderbilt, Samuel Newhouse, Marlene Dietrich, Lulu Balcom, Lucius Beebe, Rosalind Russell, Gary Cooper, Carol Channing, Richard Nixon, C.Z. Guest, Ernest Hemingway, Luis Miguel Dominguin, Walter Wanger, John Ringling North, Wooly Donahue, Frank Sinatra, Aristotle Onassis, the Duke of Windsor, the Duchess of Windsor, Merle Oberon, Vincent Astor, Elsa Maxwell, Rex Harrison, Richard Widmark, Errol Flynn, Babe Paley, Frank Shields, Frank Costello, J. Edgar Hoover, Orson Welles, Gilbert Miller, Joan Crawford, Mia Farrow, Serge Obolensky, Charles Revson, Leona Helmsley, John Wayne, Oleg Cassini, Grace Kelly, Martha Slater, Jean Howard, Charlie Feldman, Clarence Brown, Walter Wanger, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill, Gloria Guinness, Betsy Bloomingdale, Amanda Burden, Kitty Miller, Jean Shrimpton, Jill St. John, Truman Capote, and Billy Baldwin.
When it closed on December 4, 1971, many of its faithful patrons came: Truman Capote, Diana Vreeland, .... The building it was in has since been demolished.
Sirio Maccioni was the bar captain at the Colony from 1960 to 1970.
Competitors of the Colony included the 21 Club, Le Pavillon, Restaurant LaRue, and later the Four Seasons.
Maps The Colony (restaurant)
See also
- Colony Club, a women's club near the Colony restaurant and frequented by many of the same people
References
Bibliography
- Iles Brody, The Colony: Portrait of a Restaurant and Its Famous Recipes, Greenberg, 1945.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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