O.O. McIntyre

Palladium-Item/January 6, 1928

NEW YORK, Jan. 6.—With Fifth Avenue’s Millionaire Row almost completely wiped out by a new deluxe apartment house area for the lesser slobs, and the lower section of the avenue given over to trade, Park Avenue has permanently established itself as the bon ton boulevard.

Aside from millionaires and multimillionaires, there are 4,000 families on Park Avenue whose average annual income is $75,000. This section spends more than $5,000,000 a year for theatre tickets; its florist bill exceeds $3,000,000. That last item made me pout all day.

Park Avenue, peculiarly enough, spreads its luxury northward to an abrupt ending in a poverty-stricken ghetto. The street now boasts of three famous restaurants in Sherry’s, Pierre’s and the Marguery. A few sedate, signless drugstores comprise the bulk of concession to trade.

Society editors refer to it as The Gold Coast after the Chicago aristocratic district of another day. it has an austere manner, and the apartment house owners make a thorough investigation of the past history of prospective tenants.

Many who have made fortunes in shady fashion and seek the shelter of Park Avenue merely for the toney address have been turned away. Although, of course, as in all hoity-toity neighborhoods a few ladies with purple pasts crash the barriers.

But Park Avenue must pay a high tax for its swank. Innumerable tradesmen in the rarified purlieus make no secret their prices are tilted to people there. So much so hundreds of Park Avenuers send out their servants for cash and carry buying.

Madison Avenue’s most aristocratic stretch is encompassed in the old Murray Hill section—a residential area of sedate homes boasting such families as the Morgans and the Bakers. Murray Hill has persistently fought encroachment of trade that has gobbled up other sections of that avenue.

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One of New York’s best known head waiters entrusted $11,000 to one of his favorite guests for investment. And that was the last he saw of the f.g.or his $11,000. That’s the way it is the world over; loan a friend and love flies out the window.

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Libby’s, the largest Jewish hotel in the world on Delancey street, is offering from 9 p.m. to 3 a. m. cabaret entertainment to patrons of its Turkish baths. Ninety-eight per cent of the patrons I have seen In Turkish baths would not know a cabaret entertainment from a—well, you know how cock-eyed people are?

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There used to be a Turkish bath in Cincinnati that was the Saturday night rendezvous for lushers. And there one of the best of the old yarns had its origin. A befuddled gentleman fell asleep in the baking room and his roystering friends coated his face and chest with tar and a sprinkling of feathers. After a time he awakened, dripping with perspiration, glanced at himself in a mirror and cried: “In hell and a bird!”

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Noted In a theatre program: “Please do not send mash notes back stage. Every member of the company is married.” What difference does that make in New York?

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The first successful nightclub in New York was The Little Club, opened, I believe, by Justine Johnson. It survives and is the only club remaining among those of that day that retains its original name. A Broadway prognosticator predicts in another year all night clubs will be above 69th street, which is not so highly important even if true.