The Colony (restaurant)

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Coordinates: 40°45′54″N 73°58′14″W / 40.76489°N 73.97057°W / 40.76489; -73.97057
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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 was founded in 1919 by Joseph L. Pani, who later sold it to a group of employees. It closed in 1971.

History

Nowhere in New York will you find such a coterie of cosmopolites, such a consistently smart and impressive collection of people of 'breeding' as gathers daily for luncheon at the Colony. —George Ross, 1934[1]

Located on Sixty-first Street off

William K. Vanderbilt discovered it, the room became the fashionable haunt of New York high society.[5] Mayor Jimmy Walker's victory celebration was held at the Colony in 1925.[5]

The Colony served liquor during

Dom Pérignon champagne.[5] Sirio Maccioni was the bar captain at the Colony from 1960 to 1970.[5]

Competitors of the Colony included the

Four Seasons.[6]

Patrons

Among its noted customers were

Luis Miguel Dominguin, Walter Wanger, John Ringling North, 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, Jean Howard, Clarence Brown, Walter Wanger, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill, Gloria Guinness, Betsy Bloomingdale, Amanda Burden, Jean Shrimpton, Jill St. John, Truman Capote, and Billy Baldwin.[5]

The Colony had great American chic, in the sense of Cole Porter. And it was full of stylish people. So I got the idea of sending a photographer—usually Tony Palmieri—to stand outside the restaurant at lunchtime, to find out what was going on and to see what they were wearing. —John Fairchild, editor of Women's Wear Daily, 1960s[5]

When The Colony closed on December 4, 1971, many of its faithful patrons attended. The building which housed it has since been demolished.[5]

See also

  • Colony Club, a women only club near the Colony restaurant and frequented by many of the same people

References

  1. ISBN 0865476926
    )
  2. ^ a b Gene Cavallero Jr., Who Ran the Colony Restaurant, Dies at 92; article, by William Grimes; New York Times; June 16, 2016
  3. ^ Pani to Open Forty-Second Street Restaurant also Madison Avenue; article, by Charles R Osborne; New York Hotel Record; December 21, 1920
  4. ^ James Trager, The New York Chronology: The Ultimate Compendium of Events, People, and Anecdotes from the Dutch to the Present; HarperCollins; (2010); p 398; isbn needed
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h The Colony Elite; article, by Amy Fine Collins; Vanity Fair; December 2000;
  6. ISBN 0865476926
  7. ^ The Dick Cavett Show; original telecast 1969

Bibliography

  • Iles Brody, The Colony: Portrait of a Restaurant and Its Famous Recipes, Greenberg, 1945.

40°45′54″N 73°58′14″W / 40.76489°N 73.97057°W / 40.76489; -73.97057

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