The Art and Life of Rudolph Schirmer

An Artist and a Gentleman, Rudolph Schirmer left a rich legacy of creative works - poetry, fiction, non-fiction, music - and me, his only child. This chronicle is a collaborative celebration of his life and imagination.
Liane Schirmer, 2009

Friday, February 27, 2009

Park Avenue in the 1930's


This is an excerpt from "1185 Park Avenue", by Anne Richardson Roiphe, that is a fitting description of Rudolph's world of the 1930's.


...Farther down on Park Avenue the Episcopalian non-Jews lived inside their own buildings. Their children went to their own kindergartens and they had their own hospitals and pediatricians, orthodontists, orthopedists, stockbrokers, funeral homes and charity balls. They drove up on weekends to their own country clubs. Their city clubs were furnished with shabby overstuffed chairs that had been used for many generations. Their oriental rugs had worn patches from resting under a great aunt's piano or a grandfather's parlor table. Their sons spent an afternoon or so each month marching in the Knickerbocker Greys, pretending to be soldiers while practicing for future roles of leadership. Their daughters rode horses at private stables in Long Island and Connecticut. They had coming-out parties and predance dinners for offspring of thsoe who knew someone who had gone to school with the far-from-admired Franklin or Eleanor Roosevelt. They had a polo club in New Jersey. They had a Junior League with a membership whose names were all listed in The Social Register Christmas Bazaar. Their summer homes were in East Hampton, Newport, or Bar Harbor Maine. They belonged to the Harvard Club and the Yale Club and their sons went to Groton and Exeter and Andover and St. Paul's. They wore the same clothes as everyone else but not quite. They didn't wear socks with their moccasins. They knew each other instantly on sight.

No comments:

Post a Comment