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The
Carlyle is the Rolls Royce of New York hotels: quiet, stately, elegant,
slightly stuffy and very expensive. Located in the sedate reaches of the
Upper East Side, the hotel has been Old Money's traditional Manhattan
address. But, like all good hotels, it holds just as much appeal to the
locals as well. With its whimsical murals of animals in Central Park,
Bemelmans Bar--named after Ludwig Bemelman, creator of the Madeline book
series--has long been one of the most pleasant watering holes in the city.
Across the foyer is the Café Carlyle, one of the finest cabarets in the
city featuring headliners like Eartha Kitt, Dixie Carter and perennial
favorite Bobby Short. The hotel's French restaurant is one of the finest
in the city, although equally popular is the lounge where diners may have
light meals or high tea. Rooms tend to be on the small side but are in
excellent taste.
"The Carlyle's tower, said to be inspired by John Francis Bentley's
Byzantine-style Westminister Cathedral in London, although Bertram
Grosvenor Goodhue's more abstract integrations of Roman and Byzantine
sources seem more clearly evident as an influence, became the symbolic
campanile for the most fashionable district of the Upper East Side,"
wrote Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins in their
fine book, "New York 1930, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two
World Wars," (Rizzoli International, 1987).
"There is a fine, sweeping vigor in the [tower's] shaft, which sets
back at the top simply and gracefully to an octagonal tile roof capped
by a gilded element that looks like a gigantic screw-plug for an
electrical light connection," observed T-Square, an architectural
journal, shortly after its completion.
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