From Publishers Weekly
The Gramercy Park neighborhood with its London-like square, which became 19th century Manhattan's cultural center, was created in 1831 by Samuel Ruggles, a visionary lawyer and real-estate investor, and his son-in-law George Templeton Strong, a man of broad artistic and literary interests. In this well-researched study, Klein (Aline, etc.) vividly recreates the bustling activity of New York's commercial and social life surrounding the park's serene residential enclave, now a landmark area, where artists and stage and opera stars mingled with writers, business and civic leaders and philanthropists. Its elegant homes and the Players' and National Arts clubs, located on the square, harbored George Bellows, Stanford White, Edwin Booth, a galaxy of authors including Mark Twain and Edith Wharton, publisher James Harper, Gov. Samuel Tilden, Cyrus Field, William Cullen Bryant and Peter Cooper, among others, and played host to overseas celebrities such as Nellie Melba, Sarah Bernhardt and William Thackeray. An amusing chapter depicts social gatherings of the 1920s and '30s, lively parties given by arts arbiter Carl Van Vechten, and the more formal entertaining of ghetto-bred, celebrity press agent Ben Sonnenberg. Illustrated. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
This beautiful little neighborhood of brownstones and a hidden park was long the home of New York City's most glittering cultural leaders. Klein ( Aline ) presents an overview of the artistic and social trend-setters who lived there between 1820 and 1940. Her book is mostly a chatty and name-dropping social history of the city as seen through these personalities. It meanders its gossipy way from era to era with little solid meat for serious readers. It is beguiling, though, and manages to be as pleasing as the park itself. Recommended for many public libraries. Raymond L. Puffer, U.S. Air Force History Prog., Los AngelesCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"Beguiling... as pleasing as the park itself."-- Library Journal


Review
"Carole Klein has written a cultural history of Manhattan, appropriately centered in the area of Gramercy Park, which is the most amusing, the most diverting, and the most instructive that I have ever come across."--Louis Auchincloss


Book Description
New York's Gramercy Park was the Bloomsbury of America. Here Samuel Ruggles, who created Gramercy Park, hosted a grand ball for the visiting celebrity Charles Dickens and his "fat little wife." Here Walt Whitman gratefully accepted from Richard Watson Gilder a rare invitation to a party at a time when few found the poet of Leaves of Grass socially acceptable. Edwin Booth, paralyzed by remorse over his brother's assassination of the president, here sat silently behind drawn curtains. And here O. Henry searched the faces of New York's first underground travelers for the tales he would write about the city he called "Bagdad on the Subway." Gramercy Park brings to life a place and time of dazzling intellectual achievement. Walk with Henry James, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, George Bellows, and scores of others in an intimate tour of the extraordinary place that helped shape the literary and artistic values of modern America.


About the Author
Carole Klein is the author of Aline, a biography of Aline Bernstein (mentor and lover of Thomas Wolfe); Mothers and Sons; The Myth of the Happy Child; The Single Parent Experience; and Overcoming Regret: Lessons from the Road Not Taken. She is a member of the writing faculty of New School University in New York City, PEN, the Author's League, and the Biography Seminar of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

New York's Gramercy Park was the Bloomsbury of America. Here Samuel Ruggles, who created Gramercy Park, hosted a grand ball for the visiting celebrity Charles Dickens and his "fat little wife." Here Walt Whitman gratefully accepted from Richard Watson Gilder a rare invitation to a party at a time when few found the poet of Leaves of Grass socially acceptable. Edwin Booth, paralyzed by remorse over his brother's assassination of the president, here sat silently behind drawn curtains. And here O. Henry searched the faces of New York's first underground travelers for the tales he would write about the city he called "Bagdad on the Subway."

Gramercy Park brings to life a place and time of dazzling intellectual achievement. Walk with Henry James, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, George Bellows, and scores of others in an intimate tour of the extraordinary place that helped shape the literary and artistic values of modern America.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booknews

A charming history of a New York City neighborhood that was inhabited by some of America's most dazzling and influential writers, inventors, actors, and artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Originally published by Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, in 1987. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Carole Klein has written a cultural history of Manhattan, appropriately centered in the area of Grammercy Park, which is the most amusing, the most diverting, and the most instructive that I have ever come across. — Louis Auchincloss