Civic Museum

To young reporters it looked as though Resurrection Day had come to the graveyards of Trinity Church and St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie. The occasion was the opening last week, two years after the building was completed, of the Museum of the City of New York. Present in the flesh were ancient Van Rensselaers with bonnets tied under their chins, Schuylers leaning on ivory-headed canes, minor de Peysters covered with bugles and smelling of camphor. There were old gentlemen with blue-veined noses and square-crowned derbies, middle-aged ladies who had not been seen in public since the last Paderewski recital, clergymen, school teachers. It was strictly a New York party, but it had national significance. Historical societies abound in the land, but this was the first U. S. museum dedicated to the history of a city and its people.

Famed civic museums are the Museo Correr of Venice, the London Museum, the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna, the Provincial Museum of Berlin, the Musee Carnavalet of Paris,&3134; oldest of them all. la imitation of these, the Museum of the City of New York was organized in 1923 under the leadership of Harry Collins Brown, longtime editor of Valentine's Manual, with the enthusiastic support of Banker James Speyer, Supreme Court Justice Phoenix Ingraham. For several years it occupied the old wooden Gracie Mansion on the East River, between 88th & 89th Streets, onetime country place of Clipper Ship Owner Archibald Gracie. A modern fireproof building was imperative. The city donated land, a building fund was raised, an architectural competition was held. The competition was won by dapper little Joseph Henry Freedlander, an architect high in Tammany favor, who designed the bronze Fifth Avenue traffic towers removed two and a half years ago as traffic obstructions, and the equally expensive curbside traffic lights which took their place, hopes to build a shrine to Washington Irving opposite the new museum.

The museum is a U-shaped building of pure Georgian design containing a New York rarity--a real garden in its fore court. Only two floors of exhibits were on view last week but these contained enough shows to stir the civic pride of the most callous. There was Peter Stuyvesant's sword, Alexander Hamilton's desk, a set of George Washington's false teeth and the last of his real ones--extracted by Dentist John Greenwood and worn on his watch fob for many years, an idea later adopted by members of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. There was Boss Tweed's fire engine, Americus No. 6, whose dashboard was decorated with the original Tammany Tiger. There were ship models of every carrier that has plowed the harbor from the Half Moon to the Bremen. Brigadier General Clinton De Witt Falls gave a collection of the uniforms of the old 7th Regiment (the original National Guard), from. 1823 to 1931. Banker Speyer, who lives almost next door, gave a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington with the stipulation that he might take it home from time to time.

New to civic museums was the painstakingly wrought series of wax models showing great incidents in the city's history, scenes of the city as it was: Peter Stuyvesant defying the British, the arrest of Nathan Hale, Bowling Green in 1831, etc., etc. They were the work of Sculptors Dwight Franklin and Ned J. Burns. That the models might be as accurate as humanly possible, a corps of assistants have been studying books, maps and documents for four years. Sculptor Franklin is proud of the fact that his Nathan Hale is much fatter than the famed statue by Daniel Chester French, posed for by Cinemactor Francis Xavier Bushman.

Carrying the idea of preserving relics of old New York one step further, the museum's press agent is none other than touslehaired Don Carlos Seitz, best known business manager of the defunct New York World.

Every Court But China

President Hoover, said Painter Philip Alexius Laszlo de Lombos, seemed to be "an all-around man"; Mrs. Hoover he "like enormously" and praised for being "a wonderful mistress of the White House." Nor were these the only compliments which Painter de Laszlo last week paid Mr. & Mrs. Hoover. He had just hurried to finish their portraits--a three quarter length study of the President, a smaller sketch, done as a surprise for her husband, of Mrs. Hoover--so that he would be able to get them into his loan exhibition of portraits, admission proceeds of which were for the Emergency Unemployment Relief Fund, at Knoedlers Galleries, Manhattan.

In order to have your portrait painted by de Laszlo it is advisable to have a firm and masterful face if you are a man, an expression of graciously patrician elegance if you are a woman. This will make it simpler for Painter de Laszlo to inject these qualities into his portraiture, but they are by no means the only requirements for being a de Laszlo subject. You will also need $14,000 if you want a really first-rate product, full length, executed with all the Sargentesque splendor at his command. For $10,000 you can have a neat three quarter length affair, much on the order of the Hoover portrait which de Laszlo finished last week. For $3,000 he may consent to do a sketch, a little like the one of Mrs. Hoover, warm, sympathetic and technically graceful, but without much detail. Naturally, these qualifications are likely to belong to notables. Last week's show, like all de Laszlo exhibitions, was an imposing concordance of Who's Who and the Social Register, a tribute to the eminence of de Laszlo sitters and his ability to do them justice.

The Hoover portrait, of course, attracted most attention. Erased from the President's face were lines of strain and worry. Painter de Laszlo showed him in majestic mood, narrowed slightly by a be coming shadow, equipped with the dignity which Presidents so frequently require. His hands were white and soft upon his lap. On Mrs. Hoover's kind face matronly warmth was mingled with, but did not in fringe upon, a hauteur fitting for her station. Other faces on the walls -- solemn Andrew William Mellon, wise Elihu Root, martial John Joseph Pershing, temperate Frank Billings Kellogg--made it apparent that the distinction of appearing on a de Laszlo canvas could only be surpassed by that of appearing on a postage stamp. King Fuad of Egypt was painted from the side, against a tan background which suggested deserts, with a black cloak wrapped around his neck and an expression of monarchical preoccupation. Socialites-- who compose the majority of Painter de Laszlo's subjects--included Mrs. David Bruce, Mrs. James B. Duke, Mrs. Harvey S. Firestone, Jr., Miss Hope Iselin, Mrs. Ogden L. Mills, Anne Morgan, and Mrs. Jesse Isidor Straus.

One of the portraits in last week's show was of a dark and spectacularly one-eyed Hungarian nobleman, Count Laszlo Szechenyi. Count Laszlo Szechenyi is no relative of Painter de Laszlo who was humbly born at Budapest in 1869. After a few years in Budapest Industrial Art School, he stopped doing things humbly. At 25 he was summoned from Paris to the summer palace of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria to paint the Archbishop Gregorious. His portraits of the Archbishop, the Prince and his wife, gave his work the cachet it needed. Since then he has immortalized almost the entire Almanack de Gotha, visited every royal court except that of China. Like every brilliantly successful court portraitist, he has had to be a diplomat as well as an artist. The Countess Greffulh is almost unique among his subjects in that she considered his painting of her insufficiently lovely. Immensely popular with his patrons, Artist de Laszlo is somewhat less admired by artists, who doubtless envy him his income. He can console himself for the slights of his confreres by reflecting on the fact that he is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor; Knight of the Austro-Hungarian Order of the Iron Crown; Chevalier of the Order of Pius IX; Commander of the Order of Jesus Christ of Portugal; Commander of , the Royal Spanish Order of Isabella La Catholica; Commander of the Hohenzollern House Order; Commander of the Royal Greek Saviour Order; Commander of the (Swedish) Wasa Order; Grand Officer of the Crown of Italy; and equipped with medals, crosses, stars.

/- Founded in 1888 by Jules Cousin, librarian of the arsenal of Paris. He gave the city his own immensely valuable collection of books and prints relating to Paris, which were housed in the palace where once lived that greatest ot letter writers, Mine de Sevigne. The Carnavalet gained world fame under the late great Georges Cain, who knew more about Paris than any man who ever lived, originated the plan, later adopted by museums of all sorts all over the world, of humanizing his exhibits by taking them out of show cases, placing them in completely furnished rooms of the period he wished to illustrate.

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