A New England Institution

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In its early years, the New England Society in the city of New York provided firewood to New Englanders living in New York City who were in need of assistance during the winter months. “Of course, we don’t do that anymore,” a member of the board of directors, Scott Glascock, told the Knickerbocker. The society does, however, provide substantial scholarships to New York City students attending New England colleges and universities. To qualify for admittance, members must be born or attended school in New England, have New England ancestry, or lived in New England for an appreciable amount of time. An admissions committee votes on candidates who have been proposed and seconded by current members. The objects of the society are friendship, charity, and mutual assistance.


The society will celebrate its bicentennial November 11. The charitable organization will mark the occasion with a black-tie dinner with dancing to the music of NES member Alex Donner and his orchestra.


Since its founding in 1805, the society has had many well-known speakers and honorees. Mark Twain once delivered a humorous address on the subject of New England weather at an annual dinner. In more recent years, David McCullough, Walter Cronkite, Kingman Brewster, George Plimpton, Charles Osgood, Louis Auchincloss, Brendan Gill, and William F. Buckley Jr. have received the Reginald T. Townsend Award, given to a person who exemplifies the best attributes of New England character.


This year, film television and stage actor Sam Waterston will be honored. Mr. Waterston was born in New England and attended Groton and Yale. Since 1994 he has portrayed Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy on television’s “Law & Order.” He received an Oscar nomination for best actor for his performance in “The Killing Fields” and a Tony Award nomination for his role as Abe Lincoln in “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” at the Lincoln Center Theater.


In the meantime, the next time you’re in Central Park near Fifth Avenue and 72nd Street, take a look at “The Pilgrim” leaning on his musket. Sculpted by John Quincy Adams Ward, the statue was commissioned by the New England Society and sits on a granite pedestal by Richard Morris Hunt, who also designed the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.


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DEBONAIR DESIGNER The suave Oleg Cassini, former personal couturier to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who dazzled the world with the pillbox hat, was given the gold medal for fashion last week at the National Arts Club.


Mr. Cassini’s life reads like a Hollywood script. His grandfather was the Russian imperial ambassador to the United States during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley. Mr. Cassini was once married to actress Gene Tierney and later engaged to Grace Kelly. Jack Warner offered him the job of head of design for Warner Bros. Pictures after seeing him punch out two fellows at the Del Mar Hotel.


At the dinner, NAC fashion committee chairman Jean Claude Mastroianni exclaimed, “Everyone is so beautiful tonight!” Soprano N’Kenge Simpson-Hoffman sang an a cappella rendition of “Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine” from the musical “Showboat.”


Columnist Liz Smith, wearing an embroidered cream-colored jacket, paid tribute to Mr. Cassini’s “enchanting mystique.” “It’s true,” she said, “I worked for Oleg’s brother [society columnist Igor Cassini] in 1954.” She said the brothers Cassini were “a phenomenon in New York Society.”


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WRATH OF KAHN University of Florida architecture professor Robert Mc-Carter spoke recently about his new book, “Louis I. Kahn” (Phaidon Press). Among those in the audience were Columbia University professor Kenneth Frampton, and Baruch professor John Maciuika, who has written “Before the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics, and the German State,1890-1920” (Cambridge University Press).


In his slide show, Mr. McCarter told an amusing anecdote about Kahn asking a brick what it would like to be. “I would like to be an arch,” it said. He also told about a dispute between Kahn and Yale emeritus professor Vincent Scully. Mr. Scully thought Kahn’s architectural design for the meetinghouse at the Salk Institute drew upon the architecture of Hadrian’s villa. The audience laughed when Mr. McCarter related Kahn’s response: “It’s not in my nature to copy – and at any rate, who owns the circle?”


gshapiro@nysun.com


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