"The Algonquin presents in claim for public consideration an unexcelled location, a superb design, modern fireproof construction and a house and table equal to the demands of the most fastidious."
New York Daily Tribune, Nov. 23, 1902

The Algonquin Round Table set the standard for literary style and wit long beyond its ten-year duration.  After the first World War, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Robert E. Sherwood regularly lunched at the hotel, located a few doors away from Vanity Fair, where they all worked.  Friends joined them for one memorable lunch welcoming Alexander Woolcott back to his position as drama critic of The New York Times from duty as a journalist in the war.  Case treated the talented but low paid young writers to free celery and popovers and provided them with their own table and waiter, thereby guaranteeing return daily luncheon visits.  The group expanded to a core membership that included Edna Ferber, Peggy Wood, Franklin P. Adams, George S. Kaufman, Heywood Broun and Marc Connelly.

Most of the Round Table members were critics and as they lunched, they would exchange ideas and gossip which found its way into Adam's "Conning Tower" column in the Tribune the next day.  For one glorious decade beginning in June of 1919, members' opinions and writings strongly influenced young writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway.   Harold Ross, legendary editor and friend of the Round Table, created the New Yorker and secured funding for it at the hotel.  It made its debut February 21, 1925.  Today, Algonquin room guests receive a complimentary copy of the magazine.

From "Hotel Stories", by Francisca Matteoli - "The Algonquin" - Dorothy Parker

" The Algonquin is everything a literary hotel should be.  Snug, discreet, cozily retro, the perfect rendezvous for the creme de la creme of the literary and publishing worlds, as well as theather lovers, with armchairs so welcoming comfortable that they are taken by storm every evening at cocktail time.  You will often find the Algonquin cat sleeping between magazines left in the foyer and if you catch sight of Michael Lyons, the Bell Captain, bustling around, then all is well.  This friendly athletic-looking guy might look young but he certainly knows what he is doing - he's been at the Algonquin for nearly forty years.  Sir John Gielgud, Sir Laurence Olivier, the Redgrace clan, Peter Ustinov, Jonathon Price, Angela Lansbury and Anthony Hopkins have all been seduced by the Bohemian 1930s atmosphere and those famous armchairs.  Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe wrote My Fair Lady in Loewe's room, and many a Broadway playwright has memories of contracts signed in the Oak Room restaurant.  The artist Duffy published the first caricature in 1920 of what everyone would later refer to as the Round Table of The Algonquin, composed of around 30 editors and journalists who greatly influenced the style of American literature by their debates and discussions, hang-ups and obsessions, bitter judgements and witty "sound-bites".   Dorothy Parker, former dancing school pianist, recently hired by Vanity Fair after the publication of her first poem Any Porch, was the most ferocious, going wild about injustice or brutality.  She was in fact called Dorothy Rothschild and had arrived in New York after a rather sad upbringing in New Jersey.  She lost her mother when she was five years old, her mother-in-law shortly after, and her brother disappeared with the Titanic.  She wanted to live New York and soon became famous with her caustic retorts and good lineage.  She met Robert Benchley in Vanity Fair offices and they founded the Round Table of the Algonquin.  She referrer to it as the Vicious Circle.  This circle of wits met every day for lunch in the Rose Room and became so famous that the then hotel owner, Mr. Case, always let them have the same room.  It was not long before people started asking him "who is at the Round Table today"?   As years went by the group essentially limited itself to nine names: Parker and Benchley were the most glamorous because they worked for Vanity Fair, Broun and Parker were the most radical, defending causes such as Sacco and Vanzetti with a cold comtempt for prejudice.  From the heights of his column in The Times, Woollcott was the most feared and hated critic in New York.  Yet in their own way they were all seeking their own success and notoriety.  Dorothy Parker finally wore out Vanity Fair and went to try her luck in Hollywood where she wrote part of the script for A Star is Born.  She remains more famous, however, for her terse brittle acuity and excessively outspoken criticism during the Vicious Circle era.  A movie released in 1994 starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dorothy Parker told the story of this part of her life.  It was also in the Algonquin that Harold Ross created The New Yorker, that very cosmopolitan intellectual weekly if ever there was one, of which Dorothy Parker became one of the accredited writers. 

The same desk is at reception and the 1900 decoration hasn't changed either.  Both the foyer and Blue Bar are still full of people with the same subdues lighting and telephone booth in one corner, simply everything goes towards creating that undeniably unique atmosphere.  The hotel, which owes its name to North American Indians, the Algonquins, is also classified as an Historic Monument, in the same was as the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.  Times Square and Broadway, with its theaters, are only a few blocks away.  And it is not unusual to meet actors in the lobby, just about to start work.  Stores on 5th Avenue and Madison are also just minutes away, as are the Empire State Building, MoMA and the Rockefeller Center.   This elegant little hotel may be on 44th Street, "between 5th and 6th", discreetly away from the large avenues, but it is close to everything.

One last thing: a scene from Laura, Otto Preminger's chef-d'oeuvre starring Gene Tierney was shot at the Algonguin.  Can you guess which one?"

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For more information or to schedule your stay please contact:
Small & Elegant Hotels, International
9425 Whispering Sands
West Olive, MI 49460
TEL: (616) 844-6000 / FAX: (616) 844-6042
E-Mail: res@smallandeleganthotels.com

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