As is normal with upward mobility we moved out of 473 West End Avenue, and moved to the Majestic Apartments at Seventy-Second Street and Central Park West opposite the famous Dakota apartment house – famous as the locale of the film Rosemary’s Baby and for the fact that Rudolf Nureyev was living there. It had a great deal of history and notoriety when we were living there, and also prior to these events. Many, including Madonna, have been turned down in their bid to call it home. It had all of the grandeur and splendor of Riverside Drive in an era when the East Side was mostly considered a slum.
I was enrolled in Columbia Grammar and Prep School, the oldest Grammar School in the country, other than Boston Latin, and made friendships there I have kept all these years. This type of school stressed the classics. I had four years of Latin through High School and six years of French. They also had an all day athletic program, starting at 3:00 a.m. and ending at 5:00 p.m.
I did not see my Mother much at all. She had her chauffeur take her to business early in the morning, and came home late at night. Of course she worried about me. She would call the school and ask the head of the athletics program to make sure I was wearing a sweater. Of course, he made me stand up in front of the whole school and relayed the message to my embarrassment and the enjoyment of my peer group, who teased me mercilessly. Perhaps this was a turning point for me – subconsciously I had to prove something to myself – and also I wanted my parents’ respect and affection.
My Mother was a huge financial success and she worked very hard – six days a week, but I do not remember ever cuddling with her. Until I started third grade I always had a nanny. Even when we went on vacation to Europe the nanny, Miss Mack came with us.
Across 72nd Street loomed the fortress-like Dakota built years before. To visit a tenant in the Dakota a visitor was first directed under the building into a circular driveway to the entrance of the appropriate elevator where a doorman called up to verify that the visitor was expected. The exterior walls were six feet thick and the ceilings in the apartments averaged twelve feet in height, some apartments occupying two floors. Milton, naturally, had friends living there – including Mike Merkin, a successful paint manufacturer. Many years later, John and Yoko Lennon made it their home, and it was where John was gunned down. The Majestic was also the home of Frank Costello, the Mafia Don. Milton didn’t learn of that fact until a would-be assassin tried to pick off Costello as he was entering his stretch limousine, but shot a doorman in error.)
.
My Mother bought most of the furnishings in the apartment and the opulence seemed to be less a reflection of my father’s taste than of his checkbook.
By 1935 they possessed a Gainsborough, a Rembrandt, a Reynolds, a Raeburn, a Shee, a Romney and other paintings including a Vermeer, a Rubens, and a de Grebber as well as many lesser artists. Furnishings included original furniture pieces from the Louis XV and Louis XVI periods; jades, screens and porcelains from China plus a few Chippendale pieces. For the dining room exquisite Gorham and Sheffield sterling pieces were used, while carpets were Barak and Royal Sarouk. A home fit for nobility.
I remember on one occasion Sir Charles Mendl was invited to our apartment on a day that there was an elevator strike. Instead of canceling he walked up the twelve flights of stairs. Sir Charles was a good friend of my Father and was married to the illustrious decorator of the time, Elsie De Wolfe who had helped with the furnishing of our apartment.
Return to
"LIFE IN THE MARGIN" by Morton Gladstone