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The now defunct Fifty-Seventh Street Restaurant which I established a few years ago made an effort at originality by having its front room decorated by Winold Reiss, its middle room by Clara Tice (black walls ornamented with nudes in silver) its rear garden by Ilonka Karasz, and its remaining chamber by ten wall panels, each by a different artist, but all illustrating "Paradise Lost." The patrons showed at least a passing interest in these endeavors, but the subsequent occupants of the building (a group of old ladies who made it into an officers' club during the War) were horrified and had all of the decorations whitewashed over as being unfit to be viewed by susceptible young members of the army! Thus perished one attempt to create an original American art!
The road houses which cater to automobilists have contributed nothing of moment. Nikko Inn at Harmon, N. Y., is an agreeable spot of Japanese inspiration, but it is notable more for its charming location than for any decorative attributes. The same must certainly be said of Tumble Inn near PeekskiU and of Longue Vue at Hastings, while the places on Long Island are of small importance.
As for the bed chambers and suites of our hotels,
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88INTERIOR DECORATING
they are almost entirely without distinction. The new ones, like the Pennsylvania in New York, have more agreeable furniture than those that preceded them (except the Ritz-Carlton, Vanderbilt and one or two others) but no effort has apparently been thought necessary to render them more than mildly comfortable and unobjectionable. In the case of these rooms it is simply a question of dollars and cents, and tinder these circumstances no really artistic effect can be secured, for one must invariably indulge, to some small extent at least, in the extravagant, that is, in more than the barely essential, to create the decora-tively significant.
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