60 - Gloria Vanderbilt and Some Tenuous Hotel Connections

HOTEL FOURTEEN, New York City, and INN ON THE BILTMORE ESTATE, Asheville, N.C.

Little Gloria and Mom (Google)

   Gloria Vanderbilt and her tumultuous life have always held a certain fascination for me.

She was called the richest little girl in America during the depression years, and she was probably one of the unhappiest as well.   She began life, carted around by a beautiful, often irresponsible socialite mother from one European grand hotel to another:  summer in Biarritz, winter in Mégeve, a month at the Plaza or the Sherry Netherland in New York, then back to the Ritz in Paris.

The center of one of the highest publicized and most tawdry custody trials of all time, she was ultimately removed from the full-time tutelage of her mother and awarded to the care of an aunt. 

The author of any number of books, many about her life, she has often described what became a childhood rejection of the grand hotel life.  So much so that as a teenager she hated and dreaded the obligatory Sunday lunches at the Sherry Netherlands with her Mother and maternal grandmother, Nanny Morgan (see blog No. 13, "Those silver-spooned children...").

Hotel Fourteen was where Gloria Vanderbilt’s grandmother lived in New York City during the long custody battles and after.  G.V. mentioned it frequently in her first, remarkable  book of memories “Once Upon A Time” (which I highly recommend as a particularly original approach to autobiography ). 

The Fourteen was located at 14 E. 60^th Street, next door to the Pierre, and was operational  until after the Second World War, probably into the Fifties.   It  would have certainly had a certain chic-ness about it, given the location and the clientele, but I have been unable to find much more information.  

I did spot it recently in an old Dominique Dunne novel.  In his roman à clé, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” based on a famous New York society murder of the 1950’s, he described it in its waning post-war days as an address for the assignations of couples looking for a discreet hotel room. 

 I recently looked up the address, and discovered it now houses a Michelin-starred French restaurant, The Rouge Tomate, and Brenda and I and nephew Ryan tried it out on a recent trip to New York. 

The Rouge Tomate (ex-Hotel Fourteen) 2010

A big, sprawling, typically New York brasserie-style restaurant with high ceilings and lots of noise, it was good food and good value at $32 for their three-course lunch menu.

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Fantasy oil painting of Biltmore by Thomas Kinkade

  Long before the birth of Gloria Vanderbilt, her great uncle George Washington Vanderbilt built in 1895 a palatial estate in Asheville, North Carolina, known as the Biltmore Estate. 

He died before he ever had a chance to live there, but it remained in the family,  and is still owned and operated by Vanderbilt’s great grandson.  With over 250 rooms, it remains the largest privately owned house in the United States.

Brenda and I stayed at the Biltmore a few years ago on a trip to the North Carolina mountains.

We actually got around to going there in a convoluted manner.  Brenda is very much a plant and garden person; while in South Africa, she had picked up a book on fine gardens throughout the world, which included some particularly impressive photos of the Biltmore Estate.  

I was doing some research on Pinehurst, the beautiful North Carolina village where I was born, and I discovered that the architect who laid out Pinehurst in the 1890’s was the same one who had earlier redesigned Central Park in New York City.  Then, coincidentally while looking a little closer into the Biltmore estate, I learned that Frederick Law Olmsted, who had designed the other two, was equally responsible for the Asheville landmark’s 8,000 acres of landscape gardening.

So when we decided to visit said gardens, and when we discovered the existence of a hotel on the estate, we jumped at the chance of spending a night there. 

Brenda admiring the countryside 2010

I had assumed a little precipitately that the “Inn on the Biltmore Estate” was actually part of the original mansion, which would have been much more interesting.  I only realized upon arrival that the hotel, albeit a handsome building with nice, large, bedrooms and appropriately grand public rooms, was only constructed a handful of years ago.

So not so much a memorable or historic stay, it was more one of convenience and comfort.  The real joy of the hotel was its view, sitting as it is in the middle of some of the spectacular gardens, with the Blue Ridge mountains in the distance. 

In fact, it was a room with a view on a par with some of the world’s finest, of which I have seen a few.

  

Inn on the Biltmore --A room with a knockout view!

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

[Photos are mine, unless otherwise credited]