The Lambs Club -
Before becoming The Chatwal New York and The Lambs Club Restaurant and Bar,
this iconic Stanford White-designed building was the epicenter of American for
the 20th century. The building originally opened in 1905 as home to the
prestigious Lambs, America's first professional theatrical club. Organized in
1874 by a group of actors and enthusiasts, The Lambs occupied a series of rented
quarters before settling at 44th Street. The American club took their name from
a similar group in London, which flourished from 1869-1879, in the name of drama
critic and essayist Charles Lamb.
Stanford White, a partner at prominent architectural firm McKim, Mead, and
White, was the original architect of The Lambs clubhouse. His design principles
embodied the "American Renaissance," as seen in his work on summer homes for the
Astor and Vanderbilt families and such formidable structures as The Washington
Square Arch, Madison Square Garden and the New York Herald Building. For The
Lambs, he designed a six-story, neo-Georgian brick building featuring a facade
ornamented with ram heads. A boisterous grill room and billiard room were on the
first floor, a banquet hall on the second floor and a theater on the third
floor. The top floors provided space for offices and sleeping quarters, often
utilized by members traveling to The Great White Way from Hollywood. The size of
the building was doubled in 1915 when an addition was constructed on the west
end of the building, a virtual copy of the original. In 1974, the building was
designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks and Preservation
Commission.
Since the club's founding, there have been more than 6,000 Lambs, with an
elite roster reading like a Who's Who of American theater and film: Maurice,
Lionel and John Barrymore, Irving Berlin, Cecil B. DeMille, David Belasco,
Charlie Chaplin, George M. Cohan, Douglas Fairbanks, John Wayne, Richard
Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire, who was famously
quoted as stating, "When I was made a Lamb, I felt I had been knighted."
![IMAGE: Molecatcher Jerome Dormion uses a shovel in the park of the Chateau de Versailles, west of Paris, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2012. The king is dead, but the molecatcher lives on. He even signs SMS messages: “Molecatcher to the king.” It’s been over two centuries since Louis XVI was guillotined on Paris’ Place de la Concorde, but the job of hunting the underground rodent that so troubled French monarchs on the grounds of the Versailles palace still exists.]({"default":"http://col.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/DF/8765D4E5CB72B06694C641CDBDD_h366_w650_m6_lfalse.jpg","fill":"http://col.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/DF/8765D4E5CB72B06694C641CDBDD_h338_w600_m6_lfalse.jpg","snap":"http://col.stb.s-msn.com/amnews/i/DF/8765D4E5CB72B06694C641CDBDD_h210_w320_m6_lfalse.jpg"} "IMAGE: Molecatcher Jerome Dormion uses a shovel in the park of the Chateau de Versailles, west of Paris, Thursday, Nov. 22, 2012. The king is dead, but the molecatcher lives on. He even signs SMS messages: “Molecatcher to the king.” It’s been over two centuries since Louis XVI was guillotined on Paris’ Place de la Concorde, but the job of hunting the underground rodent that so troubled French monarchs on the grounds of the Versailles palace still exists. (AP Photo: Thibault Camus)")
