International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Friars Club, New York

club house. Marching at the head of this monas-
tic rabble their abbot, no less a man than Mr.
George M. Cohan, received with fitting ceremony
the massive door-key and promptly flung it into
the gutter, saying “Avaunt, oh key, this house
is for all times and at all times open,” or words
to that effect. Thus was inaugurated an all-night
club house in the metropolis.
The Friars are too well accredited to require
more than passing mention, and anyhow, cap-
tivating though the subject may be, this paper
deals briefly with the building which represents
their new home. Before, however, dismissing
them to their comfortable cells, it may be re-
called that they possess traditions of a very rare
and precious distinction. They are rated the best
entertainers in the country, their dinners being
red-letter days for all present, events that go
down undimmed into memory’s vaults. Not only
a very exquisite cuisine marks these periodic out-
bursts but amongst the members may be reckoned
some of the wittiest after-dinner speakers in
America, facile princeps Mr. Rennold Wolf, who
as “press agent” takes the distinguished guest
of the evening in hand and reverses the usual
process of praise-singing by administering the
most scathing rebukes, calling up every action
of the man’s past, and putting the most evil con-
struction upon it, needless to say no one enjoy-
ing the furious fun more than the illustrious vic-
tim himself. And then, too, who has not heard
of the Friars’ Frolic, when the cream of the theat-
rical profession tours the States, adding profusely
to the funds and kudos of the association.
The somewhat unusual character and appear-
ance of the building Certainly merits notice apart
from the historical traditions now reposing be-
neath its eaves. To think out an adequate solu-
tion for the many problems involved was no light
task for the architect, Mr. Harry Allan Jacobs.
In the first place the available site condemned
the building to overlook on either side smallish,
commonplace houses, and it was necessary to rise
above them without making its bulk too severely
felt. Then, again, a seven-storey building was
contracted for that should in no wise look like
an apartment house, an hotel, or any typical
club building; it must stand for something un-
usual and at the same time symbolize to some
extent the semi-monastic character of the occu-
pants. Without in the least pointing to 140
West 48th Street as a great work of art or an

epoch-making feature in architecture, we would
maintain that it is interesting, instructive, and
delicately bizarre, as the accompanying illustra-
tions will go far to demonstrate. Inasmuch as
monasteries, whether mission type or Old Gothic,
are invariably low buildings, the difficulty pre-
sented itself of conforming to type and at the/
same time erecting seven stories. The high
mansard and low cornice have gone far to give ;
the requisite quality of lowness, in spite of the
fact that the banqueting hall has an altitude of
twenty-five feet and the gymnasium, which is
tucked away in the mansard along with a couple
of fives courts, measures sixteen feet in height.
It was a skilful conception of the architect plac-
ing the main cornice so low that it brings its
strong horizontal shadow close to the eye.
The visitor passes through an attractive clois-
tered corridor with vault ceiling, walls, floor and
groins being treated with Moravian tiles in dif-
ferent shades of red and with inserts of different
pattern. The plaster panels in between are
painted in the same shade as the tile, giving a
very soft and subdued effect. Adjoining the
cloister or lobby are billiard room, bar and grill
room, the billiard room being panelled from
floor upward with a beam ceiling effect, the
fumed oak in this room being pleasantly employed.
The grill room, with its groined vault ceiling and
general air of a crypt, recalls the underground
cellar restaurant of St. Stephen, in Vienna. It
is with no feeling of surprise that one reads
“devilled bones” on the menu. The wainscotting
runs seven feet, above which is rough plaster
stained in an antique grey.
The walls of the big banqueting hall on the
second floor have been carried out with pointed
arches, repeating in motif the front fagade, and
preserving throughout Elizabethan and monastic
feeling. The ceiling consists of hammer beam
trusses at different intervals supporting the beam
ceiling, the ensemble being treated in dull colours,
polychrome and gold. The proscenium arch is
carried out in stone like the rest of the arches in
the room, and the spandrils are painted in grey
Gothic blue with a stencilled Gothic border.
There is scope here later on for the mural painter
with big ideas.
The banqueting hall as the life-blood of the
Friars contains a fair-sized stage upon which they
will continue to give their skits and entertain-
ments to members and friends. This splendid

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