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Now available for preorder:
The San Francisco Panorama.
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- - - - Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company - - - - A Child of the Algonquin Looks for - - - - By Jennifer Bleyer - - - - DAVID COLBY, a cordial and composed 42-year-old, perched on an Edwardian sofa in the oak-paneled lobby of the Algonquin Hotel looking for all the world like an Eloise of the cultured set. "I've never known anything but being a child of the Algonquin," said Mr. Colby, a freelance writer who grew up roaming the hotel's hallowed corridors and observing its legendary habitués. And now that new owners have completed a $3 million renovation of the hotel's infrastructure, he is trying to recreate at least a hint of the literary life that flourished within its walls. His efforts are understandable, because his roots in the place run deep. Mr. Colby's grandfather, an oilman from South Carolina named Ben Bodne, had honeymooned at the Algonquin Hotel during the famed Round Table's heyday, and he and his wife, Mary, were so charmed by the place, they eventually bought it. Starting in 1946, and for more than four decades, the couple presided over the Algonquin with Southern warmth and larger-than-life personalities. Mr. Colby was raised primarily on Long Island, but because the hotel was a family business, he spent much of his childhood there. When opening-night parties for Broadway shows glittered in the lobby, he used to putter downstairs past his bedtime. "It was like seeing Carol Channing and Julie Andrews just roaming around in your living room," he said. In 1987, Mr. Bodne sold the hotel, at 59 West 44th Street, to a group of Japanese investors. Since then, it endured years of owner turnover and neglect and declined to what some describe as a shadow of its former self. But now that the current owners, a Denver-based company called Miller Global Properties that bought the Algonquin two years ago, are improving the place physically, Mr. Colby wants to do the same for its soul. Late last year, Mr. Colby contacted the company's co-chairman, Micky Miller, about reviving the Algonquin as a literary institution. "I sent a caseload of the best bagels," Mr. Colby said, "and made an analogy between them and the Algonquin. I said, 'They will never go away, and you can't find anything like them outside of New York.'" In his independent quest to re-establish some of the hotel's previous splendor, Mr. Colby is trying to interest local cultural institutions in collaborative events and is reaching out to those who might be considered modern-day equivalents of the Round Table, like writers from "The Daily Show," McSweeney's—and, of course, The New Yorker. The other day, pulling out The Future Dictionary of America, written by a veritable Who's Who of today's writers, Mr. Colby announced with gusto that he planned to contact every one of them. The new management, while proud to have installed plasma television screens and wireless Internet, has also been trying to rekindle the hotel's literary past. It has hired the president of the Dorothy Parker Society as a consultant and established relationships with the sons of such Round Table fixtures as Robert Benchley. Recalling the days when the owner Frank Case sent plates of olives, popovers and celery sticks to the poor scribes at the Round Table, the hotel now offers lunch discounts for struggling writers. "This hotel has had cosmetic surgery, and I commend the new ownership for that," Mr. Colby said. "But it has to have a soul and a message. The Algonquin has greater potential than 100 percent occupancy." - - - - To order The Future Dictionary of America, - - - -
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