Quotes from Stephen Birmingham

various unpleasant and unexpected side effects of someone's renovation.

New York's patrician Sephardic families quickly noticed that their names were not included in McAllister's collection either. Some Sephardim expressed relief at this. But others resented it. They blamed the new exclusivity on the behavior of the "loud, aggressive, new-rich Germans." To the Sephardim, the Germans had become the toplofty, arrogant "Mrs. Tiffanys.

Over the years the Sephardim in America had gradually modified their religious services to conform more closely to the prevailing Protestant ways. Early in the 1800's Temple Shearith Israel had introduced English into the service. The cantors, or chazonim, began to assume the dignity, and the dress, of Protestant clergymen and were called "Reverend." The public auctioning of honors, which began to seem undignified, was discontinued.

We didn't move up here because it was fashionable because, goodness me, it wasn't fashionable. It was too special. Fashionable to me implies conformity, and the Dakota didn't conform to anything in the city at the time.

were hitched at mangers filled with hay. Strapped to the flanks of each horse was a table. Guests, in formal riding attire, mounted their assigned horses and were served course after course of food by waiters dressed as grooms. From the shoulders of each horse, meanwhile, were slung two saddlebags, each filled with ice and bottles of champagne. As they dined, the guests sipped champagne through

The attempt to bridge opposing worlds is apparent in the physical structure of Temple Emanu-El itself. Inside, with its pews and pulpit and handsome chandeliers—where hatted women worship alongside the men (unhatted), and not in a separate curtained gallery—it looks very like a church. But outside, as a kind of gentle gesture to the past, its Moorish façade calls to mind a synagogue.

Tilden's Extract. It cost six cents for half an ounce and could be purchased at any drug store in the city. It was recommended for "over-wrought hostesses," who were advised to take a small dose before receiving guests or going out to dinner, to prepare them for the "rigors" of the evening ahead. Tilden's was pure extract of hashish.

Something of an exception in their approach to education—as indeed they often were to other things—were the Seligmans, led by Joseph, whose longing for Americanization was overpowering. Several of his brothers had early Americanized their first names. Henry was originally Hermann, William was Wolf, James was Jacob, Jesse was Isaias, and Leopold was Lippmann.

Clark's building was to be the most opulent and lavish and at the same time tasteful that New York had ever seen, far outdoing any apartment house that then existed anywhere in the world in splendor of detail, size and scale of its apartments, and costliness of its appointments. Its interiors would replicate, and even surpass, the mansions of Goulds, Vanderbilts, Astors and Goelets.

James Hazen Hyde gave his $200,000 ball at Sherry's, at which the ballroom was transformed into a replica of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

Horseback Dinner given in 1903 by Mr. C. K. G. Billings. For this party, also at Sherry's, the ballroom was filled with live trees and shrubs to represent a forest glade. The floor was sodded, and all about the room "blue bloods of the equine world

No. 965 Fifth Avenue was a considerably more tasteful house than the old "house full of horrors" at 932.

There were the Steinways, for example (ironically

Mr. Gustav Schirmer, the great music publisher.

The soul of man is the highest product of God's creative handiwork. Now, after God has spent untold time in creating man and endowing him with a soul, which is the reflection of his image, is it reasonable to suppose that man lives here on earth for a brief span and then is extinguished by death? That the soul perishes with the physical body? That it existed in vain?

Great stress is placed on manners. "Never point," one San Francisco mother teaches her children, "except at French pastry." Do's and don'ts are rampantly important. "We'd never wear diamonds before lunch," says one woman. "Anyone who'd wear a mink stole in the daytime is automatically out," says another.

New Yorkers, New Yorkers like to say, pull together in times of crisis. They are magnificent at rising to difficult occasions. In a blizzard they reach out to help the aged lady cross the street. In a transit strike New Yorkers with automobiles offer lifts to strangers. In a blackout they emerge to help direct traffic and open up their houses to the hapless and the stranded.

Zweig said of the Joint, "Later, at some future date, we shall again gladly and passionately discuss whether Jews should be Zionists, revisionists, territorialists or assimilationists; we shall discuss the hair-splitting point of whether we are a nation, a religion, a people or a race. All of these time-consuming, theoretical discussions can wait. Now there is but one thing for us to do—to give help.

strip of real estate than that—to the blocks immediately east, south and west of Central Park.

Another friend commented, with some sarcasm, that, in putting up a building so far north and so far west of civilization, Mr. Clark might just as well be building in Dakota, which was then still a territory and not yet a pair of states.