From Sardines to Sodality

by Paul Singleton (“Covent Garden,” BSI)

Baker Street Journal, Spring 2006


(posted with the author’s permission) 


2006 finds the Baker Street Irregulars celebrating the sixty-ninth gathering of their society in its 73rd year. For eight of those past years, their Annual Dinner has been held in the sumptuous surroundings of the Union League Club, but many are aware of locations of past BSI gatherings.


Some are still extant and we have been to them, either as invitees, members, or curiosity seekers of past BSI dinners: the Racquet & Tennis Club (1948-51), of which Edgar W. Smith was a member, on Fifth Avenue and 51st Street; The Players on Gramercy Park (1970-71); The Regency on Park Avenue (1972-86); and this year Sherlockians are even returning to the past site of twelve BSI din-ners at 24 Fifth Avenue (1987-98) for the Saturday cocktail party.


Other locations are lost to us because the restaurant/dining room no longer does business, has changed hands, or because the building itself no longer exists. Among these are Christ Cella (1934 & 1936) on East 45th Street; that threadbare but beloved Victorian building the Murray Hill Hotel (1940-47) on Park Avenue, whose demolition rendered it lost to this society in 1947; and Cavanagh’s on West 23rd Street (1952-69).


Most of us think of that June 5, 1934, dinner at Christ Cella’s restaurant as the first formal meeting of the BSI. And yet . . .


There is a location, until recently unvisited, that exists in Manhattan, and though used only once by the BSI, and not for an actual dinner, it is the site of what is described in Jon Lellenberg’s BSI Archival Series book Irregular Memories of the ’Thirties as the “Nativity Meeting.” Much of that very first meeting is described in Old Irregular Robert K. Leavitt’s chapter (reprinted from his two-part 1961 Baker Street Journal reminiscences):


In the fall of 1933, the management of the Hotel Duane, on Madison Avenue between 36th and 37th Streets [sic], conceived the sales-promotion idea of making their hostelry a gathering-place for the pub-lishing and bookselling trades. They redecorated a below-stairs lounge [remember, this was just as Prohibition was ending] and plugged it in-dustriously as a luncheon and meeting place for publishers. Needless to say, they didn’t neglect to urge their idea on columnists like Chris [Morley], who wrote of and to the book-publishing world.


At that time, Christopher Morley was the Saturday Review of Literature’s Contributing Editor and writer of two weekly columns: “The Bowling Green” and “Trade Winds.” He used both columns to spread his love of Sherlockiana, draw in readers with a similar devotion, and to spread the word of Sherlockian events.


Morley must have gotten the word from the Hotel Duane. In late 1933, he noted that the first issue of the Saturday Review of Literature for 1934 would come out on January 6. Having already decided that this was Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, and noting that this day fell on a Saturday, he began making plans for a party to be held on that day at the Hotel Duane, hoping to be either partially or fully subsidized by Doubleday, the publishers of The Complete Sherlock Holmes (for which Morley wrote the introduction) three years earlier. He even published an article in “The Bowling Green” column entitled “Sherlock Holmes and Cocktails,” calling on the Hotel Duane to invent a Sherlock Holmes cocktail in honor of the birthday, and noting that the price of cocktails had “gone back to 25 cents.”


Leavitt continues, “the hotel turned over exclusive occupancy of the newly decorated downstairs lounge to a mixed company of maybe fifteen or twenty whom Chris had invited . . . . I remember . . . Chris . . . Bill Hall, Frank Henry, Mitchell Kennerley, [Robert K. Leavitt, of course] and some, at least, of Doubleday’s sales force [including Malcolm Johnson, head of Doubleday’s Crime Club division] among the men.” It may be a surprise to realize that ladies were also invited, some of them no doubt from the Grillparzer Sittenpolizei Verein, another of Morley’s impromptu clubs and a forerunner of the BSI.


The main event of the gathering was the playing of Sardines, which Leavitt described as “as sort of Hide-and-Seek in reverse.” The one who is “It” hides and the others look for him — or her. When him — or her is found, the seeker crowds into the same hiding place with — her. So does each successive seeker who finds them. The hiders, ever increasing in number, become very com-pressed while waiting for the rest of the seekers. It was apparently a very happy game. Sadly, none of the names of the ladies who attended are recorded.


This was hardly the stuff of future gatherings of the Irregulars, with their delivery of scholarly papers, recitations of constitutions and rituals, and award-ing of investitures (although the imbibing was right on target). Leavitt notes that “[a]s the Delivery of a new-born society, it was hardly noticeable. Chris spoke of its being Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, and proposed several toasts . . . ” In his 1961 article, Leavitt couldn’t even recall if the name “The Baker Street Irregulars” was actually mentioned at that meeting.


But Leavitt also records that “Chris, at least, regarded this as the first meeting of the BSI . . . within two weeks he had it firmly fixed in mind, and was talking of the BSI in print. And the dating of the Second Annual Meeting (so termed by Chris, on the menu) is significant; it was held on January 6, 1936, even though that day was a Monday.”  Morley’s “Trade Winds” column for January 13, 1934, stated: “The ‘Baker Street Irregulars,’ a club [sic] of Holmes–and–Watson devotees, held its first meeting on January 6, the date now accepted as Sherlock Holmes’ birthday.” This was the first published mention of the society’s name.


Morley reported in “The Bowling Green” of January 27, 1934, that discussion at the meeting included the creation of official toasts, the first being to “The Woman.” The others were to “Mrs. Hudson,” “Mycroft,” “The Second Mrs. Watson,” “The Game is Afoot!” and “The Second Most Dangerous Man in London.” Seventy-two years later, these toasts are still observed, on a somewhat rotating basis, at BSI dinners.


Just two weeks after the report of the gathering at the Hotel Duane came Elmer Davis’s Constitution of the Baker Street Irregulars (without the “Buy Laws” in its title, which appeared later) in the February 17 “The Bowling Green,” and the BSI was well on its way. The now-famous Sherlock Holmes crossword puzzle (devised by Morley’s brother Frank) and first “official dinner” were only a few months down the road.


But where exactly was the Hotel Duane with its “below-stairs lounge” located — and did the building and the room still exist in one form or another?


The search for this building led me all over New York into its various depart-ments and historical resources:


The Hotel Collection at the New-York Historical Society lists the Hotel Duane as being located at 237-239 Madison Avenue, between 37th and 38th Streets.


At the New-York Historical Society Library, an old postcard bearing a picture of the hotel and the address 237 Madison Avenue confirmed that the building which still stands at that address was the Hotel Duane.


The online New York real estate source Property Shark states that the building at 237 Madison Avenue used to bear the alternate address of 237-239 Madison Avenue (currently there is no 239 Madison Avenue) and was built in 1926 (as does a 1933 New York Times real estate article.) A photograph reconfirms that the building at that address is still the one built in 1926.


The hotel building to the north of the former Hotel Duane, known as the Allerton Fraternity House in 1934 (and now the Jolly Hotel Madison Towers), and which had previously been identified as the Hotel Duane, has in the past had the address of 241-245 Madison Avenue and was never 239 Madison Avenue. Currently, its address is 22 East 39th Street.


A Hotel Duane menu (purchased over eBay) from the 1940s, bearing an illustration of the front of the hotel on its cover, proves that the façade and name Hotel Duane survived at least that long.


So much for the identification of the building — what of the historic room itself? In his essay, Robert K. Leavitt describes the meeting-place as a “redecorated . . . below-stairs lounge” and a “newly decorated downstairs lounge.In the fall of 1933, the building, retaining its name, was leased to M. J. Pauchey, who became the resident manager. This change in management (as well as the impending repeal of Prohibition) explains the impetus for the renovation and opening of a new cocktail room. Plans submitted to the New York City Department of Buildings dated late 1933 from architect Irving Margon and labeled “New Grille Rm in Basmt” mention new wood paneling being installed and, most importantly, a “space for bar.” The clinching argument comes from Morley himself: the “Trade Winds” column of the February 17, 1934, Saturday Review of Literature, written by P. E. G. Quercus (a Morley pseudonym), stated that “The Hotel Duane has opened a Cocktail Room in the basement for the special recuperation of the publishers and Book Boys on Murray Hill.” (Emphasis mine.) This, then, is the “redecorated . . . below-stairs lounge” where the BSI gathered on January 6, 1934.


Some background on the Hotel Duane: the building, designed by architect Andrew J. Thomas, consisted of fifteen floors and 150 hotel rooms. Records from the New York City Department of Buildings show that the plans were sub-mitted to the City in 1925. The front of the building (looking just the same as it did in 1927) is tan brick, with three limestone arches and two twelve-foot pillars at the ground floor entranceway. The roof is covered in Italian terra cotta tiles, culminating in a peaked tower. The plans also show a Spanish-style restaurant on the ground floor and a 17x37-foot cellar “Grill Room.” Construction was fin-ished in 1926, and the Duane Hotel opened on January 1, 1927. A November 1933 ad in the New York Times touted that a room and private bath could be had for the rates of $3, $3.50, or $4 a night. The special Sunday dinner in the Catalan Room (the ground-floor restaurant) had a prix fixe of $1.


The hotel changed hands at least five times over the decades, and had at least one name change. It was known as the Executive Hotel into the seventies and early eighties, and by that time its profit came chiefly from the rooms being engaged sometimes as often as six or seven times nightly. Enter Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the team who had opened Studio 54 in 1977, only to crash and burn twenty months later when the IRS nabbed them for tax evasion. Released from a thirteen-month stint in prison in 1981, they returned to New York determined to take on other projects. At first, they could not persuade a bank to even let them open a checking account, but gradually they found backing, and in 1983 purchased the Executive Hotel for $2.5 million. Renaming it Morgans Hotel for the nearby Morgan Library, they pioneered the design of the “boutique” hotel, aiming for a smaller, more intimate atmosphere and designing the rooms to look more like an apartment or home than a hotel room. Within a year of the opening in October of 1984, they were operating a $14 million hotel with a 96% occupancy rate. Both the ground floor restaurant and the basement bar were renovated in 1984; the basement bar was redesigned and renamed Morgans Bar in 2002.


All this investigation merited some on-site seeing and observing. The entrance to Morgans Bar is to the left of the ground floor entrance at 237 Madison. I descended those sixteen steps (one can’t have everything), turned right and walked along a short corridor which opened up into — the room. Don’t look for it to resemble that 1934 room; the wood paneling and stone fireplace are long gone. The dimensions of the room are the same, the ceiling is rather low, and a bar is still in the back. The walls are exposed brick, with chain metal curtains and mirrored screens interspersed throughout. The lounge as it’s laid out now seems to seat about 40, and is lit by scores of candles. Some of the chairs are in the style of Louis XVI gilded fauteuil, and are upholstered in bold prints. Side tables are made of clear lucite. The eclectic look of the décor is a cross between elegant modern and classic French, with a bit of the Arabian Nights tossed in, by the looks of a couch in a curtained nook accessorized with plenty of pillows. It’s very much a cocktail bar, and an upscale one at that; one would not feel out of place ordering a Sidecar in these surroundings. Drinks, by the way, are a bit pricey; a Manhattan will set you back 16 bucks. But it was quite good — just the right amount of bitters — and after one of those I was asking the ladies at the bar if they were up for a round of Sardines.


The Grille Room of the Hotel Duane was witness to only one meeting of the BSI — but it was the natal event. The thought of the end-of-Prohibition cele-bration, coupled with the dawn of a Sherlock Holmes society in America with its scholarship and conviviality, delights the mind’s eye with a Nativity composed of Christopher Morley and an unnamed lady — perhaps a forerunner of the honorary The Woman — huddled together and surrounded by Leavitt, Hall, and a Doubleday sales rep all in cozy tableau during a round of Sardines, and all looking tranquilly down to Morley’s arms, which cradle a copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes . . . .


And the room where it all began is still there at Morgans Bar, in the basement level of Morgans Hotel at 237 Madison Avenue, on the east side of the avenue between 37th and 38th Streets, in the middle of the block, presently wedged between the Jolly Hotel Madison Towers to the north and the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland to the south — not even five minutes’ stroll from where the BSI has gathered every January since 1999 at the Union League Club on the corner of 37th Street and Park Avenue. In the early 1980s, the space was again renovated to become an exercise room. Now, in 2006, as in 1934, the Sherlockian can descend those sixteen steps and once again exercise not the muscles, but the brain and the heart — as well as the elbow.



SOURCES


Daly, Michael, “The Comeback Kids,” New York Times Magazine, July 7, 1988.


Hotel Duane file, New-York Historical Society Hotel Collection.


Hotel Duane postcard, New-York Historical Society Library of Prints, Photographs and Architectural Collections.


Hotel microfilm files NB-787-25 & ALT 2594-33, New York City Department of Buildings.


Lellenberg, Jon L., ed., Irregular Memories of the ’Thirties, Fordham University Press, 1990.


Morley, Christopher (Quercus, P. E. G., pseud.), “Trade Winds,” Saturday Review of Literature, February 17, 1934.


Property Research Partners LLC <www.propertyshark.com>.