Wednesday, April 13, 1927: New York
Opening Day: The Fire Party
About six hours ago — a little after two o’clock this morning — I was leaning against a wall in a hotel suite on the 14th floor of the Plaza Hotel, taking a break from my first “Fire Party,” when an old swell in a tuxedo walked up to me, lifted his martini glass and said, “Take a good look around you, kid. This isn’t going to last forever.”
The room we were surveying, a suite the size of a ballroom, was filled with over a hundred men of various ages and flappers of considerably less, drinking and dancing, along with a dozen colored musicians, each one playing a variety of instruments and drinking, too.
It was quite a blow, beastly hot, as hot as if we were all on fire. The windows to the suite were all open wide, but it didn’t matter, you didn’t have to breathe very deep to smell the sweat mingling with the perfume and the aftershave, the men’s cigars and the smoke eaters’ cigarettes. Most of our bow ties had long ago been taken off, mostly by women we hadn’t met before last night. And a good deal of their clothing would’ve come off, too, if they’d been wearing much to begin with.
And to think, all of us had come together on this warm night in April to watch one of the tallest buildings in Manhattan burn.
And have a party to celebrate it.
You see, yesterday evening, not long after we finished up our Opening Day game against the Athletics — we beat them 8–3 (goddamn, how I hate the Athletics, especially now that they have that bastard, Cobb) — not long after Waite Hoyt got Bill Lamar to hit a bankrupt grounder to second for the final out, the top floors of what was going to be the Sherry-Netherland Apartment Hotel on 59th street and 5th Avenue caught on fire.
This morning’s newspaper said it was floors 23 through 38, which made for one giant candle. I’ve pasted a picture from the paper. It’s damn dramatic. Just now as I’m writing this, the radio said the light of the flames could be seen as far away as Long Island.
The Sherry-Netherland is under construction; it hasn’t opened yet, so no residents or guests were there. And the fire started after the workers had left, so amazingly no one was hurt. Actually, what’s most astounding is that apparently none of the people building skyscrapers here in Manhattan had thought very much about how to put out fires in the clouds. There’s no hook and ladder that goes up thirty floors. Not even in New York City. So all they can do is hose down the lower floors and the surrounding buildings, and let the thing burn itself out.
The fire was a slow disaster and it attracted an enormous crowd. Tens of thousands of people, according to this morning’s radio report. They gathered under an almost full moon to watch it, filling up Fifth Avenue and spilling into Central Park.
Lining the avenue, as if they were watching a parade, were women in evening gowns, men in opera hats, workmen in overalls, children in pajamas — all of them lingering for hours under the light of the blaze that lit up the avenue as if it were mid-afternoon.
Last night, as we stood on the balcony of the Plaza, barely a block away, we could feel the heat and hear the roar of the fire. The spectacle was punctuated by the sound of perhaps 50,000 New Yorkers gasping as one each time a giant ember from the wooden scaffolding broke off the top floors and, amid a shower of sparks, bounced off the building and fell to earth like dying fireworks.
It was the second largest crowd of the day.
72,000 fans showed up at Yankee Stadium for Opening Day. Most of them came by train but Steven, my college roommate from Penn State, true to his word, drove up to the Stadium with three cars full of his fellow Wall Street swells and a couple of dolls, and afterwards he gave me a ride back to his house to celebrate. New York is filled with celebratory souls. And Steven knows them all. I think one of the reasons Steven and I are still friends is that we Yankees win so much, giving him something to celebrate at least 90 times a year.
When the twelve of us got back to his house just after eight o’clock, one of Steven’s maids told him about the fire that was being reported on the radio. Immediately upon hearing this news, one of the swells, Bill Powers, bet another one of the Wall Street swells a thousand dollars that he could have the best party of the year that night. Once they had shaken hands on it, Powers practically jumped on the telephone.
First, he called up the Plaza and booked two suites with balconies on the 14th floor that looked right out on the Sherry-Netherland. That cost him a thousand dollars for the night. Normally it would have been $600, but the manager at The Plaza told Powers this was a fire sale. Then Powers called a colored guy he knows up at The Cotton Club for a band. Then he called Texas Guinan and asked her if she could spare some girls for the night, hers or anybody else’s. When he had hung up from that last call we gave him a standing ovation. The wager was declared already won by Powers, and just like that “Billy P.” had an extra $1,000, lost among the many hundred dollar bills lining his pockets. Then, in an instant, everyone was scattering to get home, put on a tuxedo and meet up at The Plaza, in Suites 1400 and 1401.
Before they left, we all took a solemn oath to each bring no more than ten people.
Steven lent me his tux — he wore his top hat and tails, of course — and we made it up to the hotel around 9:45. The lobby was swarmed with people trying, but too late, to book rooms. I’ve got to give Bill Powers credit for jumping on the phone like he did, but I guess that’s why he owns his townhouse and I rent a floor in one of Steven’s houses. We quickly got to one of the clerks and gave him the official party password. (“Screw Ty Cobb.” My idea, thank you.) That password, along with $20, got the clerk to personally escort us up to the suites.
As our elevator rose up to 14, we could hear the music even before we passed the 11th floor. When the elevator doors opened, it was immediately clear that at least one of the swells had invited more than ten people—a great many more. Steven proudly admitted it was him. Before we could step off the elevator into the mob, a policeman in uniform, smoking a cigarette, asked for our credentials. Steven’s response was to tell the officer: “Screw Ty Cobb.” The policeman agreed with the sentiment, and we were in.
Cigarette smoke was floating out of the doors of the suites and carried with it the sounds of the party — jazz and a parade of strangers seeking out one another — which echoed in the hallway. Orange light flashed out through the doors of the suites, as if the rooms were lit by candles. But of course it was the flames from the Sherry-Netherland.
If this party were a ballgame, it would have been as if Babe Ruth came to bat for every player, over and over, and hit a home run each time up — and then the game went into extra innings. Many, many extra innings.
The real talent started showing up around midnight. That’s when Fats Waller arrived with a white kid with a small trumpet. Waller is physically as big as Babe Ruth, and like the Babe he moves gracefully and deceptively fast. Last night Fats, as he always is, was dancing all over the keys. As soon as Fats walked into the room, the colored who had been playing the piano moved over to the vibes for the rest of the night. And from the moment Fats started playing “Blue Black Bottom,” the band and the rest of the room moved to his beat.
I had invited one person, my roommate when the Yankees are on the road, Benny Bengough. As he always does, Benny brought his saxophone with him. He proudly told me that when he got out of the elevator and saw the cop, he lifted up his sax case and yelled, “Fuck Ty Cobb!”
Benny knows Fats and a couple of his band members well, so after he shook hands with a bunch of the swells, he sat in with the band. The white kid Fats brought along is named Bix, and even though he plays jazz full time in an all-white band, almost every night after his shows are over he goes uptown to Harlem and plays till the sun comes up. He’s becoming famous, but he doesn’t like the attention, so when he shows up at gigs like this, he’s like a ghost.
Most of the girls there were younger than major league rookies. Ruby Stevens came in early. She was one of Texas Guinan’s girls a couple of years ago, just another great looking underaged kid hoofer until you started talking to her, then you could tell she was an “It Girl.” She’s just gotten noticed on Broadway, and now she calls herself Barbara Stanwyck, instead of Ruby Stevens. Benny and I just call her Stanwyck. Especially when she says, “Please, please call me Barbara.” We immediately answer, “Sure, Stanwyck. No problem.”
Stanwyck had a bit part in a moving picture shot here in New York this year, and last night she told Benny she’s going out to Hollywood in the fall. The other great skirt of the evening, Louise Brooks, already spends a lot of time making films out there. Steven and Louise hadn’t seen each other for a couple of weeks, so they got lost for a time and then came back around 1:00 a.m., which was when hizzoner Jimmy Walker appeared.
Mayor Walker had thrown out the first pitch earlier at Opening Day, and Benny had caught it, so they were like old pals. Hizzoner had all the dirt on the fire. He said over 700 police officers had been brought in to control the crowds and that he thought half the people were going to sleep in the park around the duck pond.
After touring the scene, Walker called in the gangster and pickpocket squads, along with all available detectives. The crowd, transfixed on the flames five hundred feet above them, had become a magnet for the quick and nefarious hands that delight in separating a person from his wallet.
During the only break the band took all night, the Mayor, Benny, Fats and I got to talking about the game. Fats had been there, too, and he talked about when Cobb beat out a bunt in the 6th, and then went from first to third on a single. Fats said, “He was showing everyone that he can still gas at 40.” Benny told Fats and the mayor about how Cobb started out the game with a base on balls and then, as he walked to first, how Cobb shouted past Gehrig, out to Ruth standing in right field, “Here I come, N*gg*r Lips.” Hearing this, Fats then repeated Benny’s version of the password.
Around two o’clock the fire had died down but the room was still raging. Everyone was fueled by booze, half the room was fueled by youth, and the other half was fueled by the desire to stay young. You could feel it. It was like a huge sandlot baseball game, a game where nobody cared about winning or losing because everyone felt like they couldn’t lose, like the game was rigged, and everyone was sure that was a good thing.
I found myself watching the party like I was watching a game from the stands, like I was one of the 72,000 people who had watched us play earlier in the day. Only instead of the roar of the stadium, I was hearing the roar of the band and Bill Powers’s “Fire Party.”
And that’s when the elderly swell in a tuxedo, still wearing his bow tie, walked up to me, lifted his martini glass and said, “Take a good look around you, kid. This isn’t going to last forever.”
- BIX Beiderbecke
- BENNY Bengough
- LOUISE Brooks
- TY Cobb
- TEXAS Guinan
- BILL Powers
- Barbara STANWYCK
- STEVEN
- FATS Waller
- JIMMY Walker
- 1927 Yankees
- Sherry-Netherland Apartment Hotel
- Steven’s Townhouse (Behind the Dakota)
- NEW YORK TIMES, April 13, 1927: “Hotel Netherland Tower Ablaze 38 Stories Above Fifth Avenue; Flaming Embers Menace Wide Area”
- NEW YORK TIMES, April 13, 1927: “72,000 Pack Park, Set Crowd Record As Yanks Triumph”
- April 12, 1927: Yankees 8 vs. Athletics 3, Box Score
