New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [387]
“He’ll meet the right sort of people there,” Charlie said cheerfully. Roosevelt, Auchincloss, Morgan, Whitney, du Pont, Adams, Harriman, Grew … People with names like that went to Groton.
“Wasn’t there somebody called Peabody there?” asked Gorham.
“Yes, Gorham.” Charlie smiled. “He founded it. He was headmaster there for fifty years. Well done.”
“It’s not Peabody, dear,” said Rose. “It’s pronounced Pee-bdy.”
“Oh, Mother,” said Charlie with a shrug. “At his age …”
“Pee-bdy,” said his mother firmly.
It amused Charlie how old money in America had somewhat adopted the English custom of leaving verbal traps for the socially unwary. Old money pronounced certain names in ways that discreetly separated them from the rest. There were other words, too. The modern custom of referring to a man’s casual evening dress as a “tuxedo,” or even worse a “tux,” was definitely considered vulgar. Middle-class America said “tuxedo.” Old money said “dinner jacket.”
“Mind you,” said his mother quietly, “I hear Groton let in a black boy.”
“They did,” said Charlie. “A couple of years ago. Good thing.”
“Oh well,” his mother murmured, “at least it wasn’t a Jew.”
Charlie shook his head. There were times when you just had to ignore his mother.
When they came out afterward, Gorham saw one of the pretty little horse-drawn hansom cabs standing by the corner, and asked if they could go for a ride. Charlie glanced at his mother, who nodded.
“Why not?” said Charlie.
It was a pleasant ride. First, they went down Fifth Avenue. His mother was her usual self. As they passed Bergdorf’s elegant department store, she explained to Gorham: “That used to be the Vanderbilt mansion.” A couple of minutes later, as they approached the High Gothic front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, she said sadly: “This used to be all private houses. Now it’s just churches and stores.”
Yet in fact, Charlie realized, they were actually coming to the true, spiritual center of Midtown. And it wasn’t the cathedral, important though that was. No, Manhattan’s spiritual center lay opposite the cathedral, right across the street.
How well he remembered those long years, all through the thirties and beyond, when one looked across Manhattan to see the huge tower of the Empire State Building, the great symbol, dominating the sky. But the symbol of what? Failure. Eighty-eight floors of offices—which couldn’t be let. People did rent them eventually, but right through the Depression years, it was known as the Empty State Building. And you’d have thought others would hesitate to build more office blocks at such a time.
But not if you knew New York, or the Rockefeller family.
Just before the crash of ’29, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had leased twenty-two acres on the west side of Fifth Avenue to build a complex of art deco office buildings and an opera house. After the crash, the opera house had to be abandoned. But that didn’t stop Rockefeller executing the rest of the project. Single-handed, the richest family in the world developed not one but fourteen office towers, with roof gardens and a central plaza, creating the most elegant street space in the city. Its delightful central court doubled as an open restaurant in summer and small ice rink in winter. Toward the end of a decade of building, some of the construction workers, one December, decided to put a Christmas tree in the plaza.
Rockefeller Center was a triumph. It was big, it was elegant, it was rich. It was created by New Yorkers who refused to take no for an answer. Even the Depression couldn’t keep them down. That was it, Charlie thought. That was the point of New York. Immigrants came here penniless, but they made it all the same. God knows, the first Astor had come with almost nothing. It was the tradition, going right back to those hard, salty East Coast sea captains and settlers from whom he and his son descended. Rockefeller was a titan, like