In this series for T, the author Reggie Nadelson revisits New York institutions that have defined cool for decades, from time-honored restaurants to unsung dives.
At the Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle Hotel on 76th and Madison, a little girl in a red dress with a white lace collar stands by the grand piano, and, with some insouciance, as if at 6 she were auditioning for Broadway, belts out a song from “Annie.” It’s a snowy Saturday afternoon in December, Christmastime in the city, and Madeline’s Tea Party is in full swing.
Madeline, of course, is the heroine of the children’s books by Ludwig Bemelmans, the German-born artist who also painted the walls of this bar, and she is here in her blue coat and big white hat on the wall at the far side of the bar, along with her gang of fellow French schoolgirls. As each of the six stories, published between 1939 and 1961, begins: “In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines … the smallest one was Madeline.”
Robert Huyot, the French-born general manager of the Carlyle in the ’40s, was friends with Bemelmans and asked him to paint the new bar in exchange for rooms at the hotel. (Bemelmans and his family lived there for 18 months — not a bad deal.) The bar was named for the artist and has been iconic since it opened in 1947. Although Bemelmans consulted with Huyot, he was given free rein to paint what he liked, and so he depicted Central Park across four seasons and included Madeline (perhaps, in Bemelmans’s mind, she is visiting New York from Paris). There are animals, too, gamboling in the park — the indolent elephant with a parasol, the raffish bunny in a boater, a family of giraffes — all of it a gloss on the uptown social scene, whimsical, charming, with a tiny spritz of irony, like the Vermouth in your gin.
Near the buffet table behind the piano, more little girls in party dresses and a few towheaded boys are stuffing their faces with miniature burgers and tea sandwiches, cupcakes and candy, and frosted cookies the shape of the Eiffel Tower. On the chocolate leather banquettes lining the walls sit the mothers, fathers and grandparents eying — a little wistfully — a few adult interlopers who are drinking cocktails at the bar. At the grand piano is Tina de Varon, a terrific musician and a genius child wrangler: She has the kids singing and dancing, calling out favorites, and even the chubby 2-year-old in blue is boogieing with style. “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens …” And on the bar and tables and piano are piles of Madeline dolls and books, embroidered napkins and painted plates in honor of the little girl who was born in 1939: Madeline is 80 this year.
All of this leaves me swamped by terrible seasonable nostalgia for my childhood Christmases in New York, which included the miraculous windows at Lord & Taylor, greedy visits to F.A.O Schwartz, making snow angels in Washington Square, seeing the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall and skating in Central Park, followed by hot chocolate at the Carlyle with plenty of whipped cream.
As a fat, nosy, inquisitive child, I loved grand hotels, which always seemed to me like fabulous dollhouses that you could enter and live in, and there is none grander than the Carlyle. This, I imagined, was a place where you could slide down the banister, chat to the uniformed elevator men who always knew the best gossip, and access that magic telephone line called room service. The staff, which had been around seemingly forever, knew everyone’s name.
The Carlyle was conceived in part as a residential hotel and opened in 1930, the same year as the Chrysler Building. It was a very good era for style, when Art Deco was the rage. The hotel was farther uptown than the likes of the Plaza and St Regis Hotels, and, at that time, there were still sheep in Central Park (they kept the lawns tidy). Nineteen-thirty was also the first full and desperate year of the Great Depression, when a third of New York was out of work and there were shacks in the park — known as Hoovervilles — where the homeless lived.
Even as the Upper East Side has changed, with its slick restaurants and fancy bars, the Carlyle has remained itself: elegant, friendly, discreet. John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe stayed here at the same time in the early ’60s, the young British Royals still do and Roger Federer has a suite named for him. It is old but never dusty: During the Met Gala each May, the Carlyle is where everyone changes, and you can stand gawking on the sidewalk as Beyoncé and Cardi B and Billy Porter explode in costume.
In my mind’s eye, I still see Jackie Kennedy, who always sat at the same table, emerging from lunch; or the singer Bobby Short at the piano in the Café Carlyle where he played (mostly Cole Porter) in his impeccable tux from 1968 to 2004. Short, the most elegant and witty of men, made the cafe the quintessential New York supper club.
Bemelmans Bar is next to the cafe, just across the gallery where tea is served in the afternoon. In a few years, the kids at the tea party will be coming in for martinis in the evening when the low light shines off the ceiling, which is covered in gold leaf. At around 5 p.m., the cocktail crowd filters in, first older local couples in suits and dresses and pearls, later young people, some in preppy plaid pants and blazers. Tourists cram in. There is a young military man in a red dress uniform with medals and ribbons hanging from it like a Christmas tree.
Frank Bowling, who was the general manager of the Carlyle in the ’80s, says, “To me, Bemelmans was like a Whit Stillman movie, all Upper East Side, but also comfy. I’d stand at the side and watch the phenomenon, and I remember one night when Tony Bennett was a customer he just got up and sang. As fancy as it is, it’s a real neighborhood bar.”
In the evenings, the composer and musician Earl Rose is at the piano. He’s been here 25 years, and he can play anything, can intuit the mood of the audience. Still, this is Great American Songbook territory, and he does a lot of George Gershwin and Porter and Harold Arlen. We are both born New Yorkers, and during a break we fall into nostalgic conversation about Christmas in the city and the Lionel trains in the Toy Building near Madison Square Park. When he returns to the piano, he glances at me and swings into the next number, Rodgers and Hart’s 1926 standard, “Manhattan”; a moment later, a few of us are humming along: The great big city’s a wondrous toy just made for a girl and boy. We’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy!