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 Garden Partying; Remembering Anthony Baker
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| Fellows and Young Fellows of The Frick Collection at last night's Summer Garden Party on the Fifth Avenue garden of The Frick. |
Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny and warm Summer day in New York. Last night too. About six I took the dogs for a quick walk along the Promenade. So many were out already. The Carl Schurz Park Association members were setting up for an evening concert. The sun was casting its last light on the Roosevelt Island and Queens. The river flow was fast and serene.
The two dog play areas (big/small) were hopping. Lots of strollers, runners, cyclists, young families, older couples.
After we finished the walk, I put on a jacket and a tie and went down to Mr. Frick’s house on Fifth Avenue and 70th Street where The Frick Collection was holding its Garden Party from 6 to 8 for its Fellows and Young Fellows. Many of the museum events are staged to raise funds. This was a bonus for the members of the two groups. It was held entirely outside on the Fifth Avenue terrace, and on the 70th Street side where the Russell Page Garden is located.
It was a perfect night for some drinks and outdoor conversation in a garden across the street from the forest of Central Park, all in the middle of the metropolis. The bar was serving wine, water and mint juleps. In the 70th Street Garden, The Frick’s Horticultural and Special Events Designer Galen Lee was holding an impromptu talk about the Garden with some of the guests.
The Fifth Avenue Garden was created in 1935 by Frederick Law Omstead II and the 70th Street by Russell Page. Russell Page is a name nearly forgotten today but for decades he was the man to design your garden if you were very rich and maybe fashionable too. Tall and lean, British, always smoking, always drinking, a tyrannical approach to his assignment which few argued with, his clients loved him, loved his company (he’d live with them while doing his work), and only some later found out that he’d been a spy in North Africa during the Second World War.
Mr. Lee’s “talk” was full of anecdotes and explanations of how the garden was created and what were the intentions of the designer. When you listen to these guys off-handedly talking about their work, you realize it’s a calling but a deeply rewarding one.
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West east view of the 70th Street Garden designed by Russell Page. Galen Lee, the museum's Horticulture and Special Events designer (back to camera, blue blazer, tan pants, left foot on the poolside) is giving a "talk" on the history of the garden and its designer. |
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| The lily pond of the South Garden. |
Whiile we’re on the subject of The Frick’s Gardens, I should also add that the internal Garden Court was designed by another major figure, John Russell Pope.
There were about 275 guests over the two hour period. Among those who accepted were Elisabeth Saint-Amand, Lydia Fenet, Fiona Benenson, Lucy Lang, Emily Pataki, Aimee and Michael Remey, Clare and Robert McKeon, Yasmin Dovas, Susan Quintin, Caroline Rowley, Frederick and Candace Beineke, Marquette du Bary, Lee Ann Dillon, Joanne DuPont Foster, Emily T. Frick, Rachel Gores, Jeremiah Milbank, Alfredo Versace, Aso Tavitian, Elizabeth and Stanley Scott, Robert F. and Lucinda Ballard, Felicia Bonaparte, Sarah Camp, Henry Arnhold, Ann Nitze, Mark Murray, the Restivo sisters, Bridget and Mary Ann; John Punnet, Elsie Nelson, Jo Hallingby, Evelyn Tompkins, Alexandra Ford, Julia Gray. |
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Alexis Light of The Frick, at the gate in her DVF brushed silk shift. |
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Looking across the lawn from the Olmstead Garden. |
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Heidi Rosenau |
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Mary Ann and Bridget Resitvo |
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Mark Murray of Mark Murray Galleries and Heidi Leiser |
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Trina Hildago and Krystyna Chmeillewska |
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Kathleen Murtha and Jill Schaeffer |
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Alexandra Ford, Ann Nitze, Evelyn Tompkins, and Julia Gray |
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Elsie Nelson and John Punnett |
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Many New Yorkers, Palm Beachers and Southamptonites were deeply saddened to hear of the death on Wednesday of Anthony Kane Baker who was killed in a plane crash in the Tennessee River near Athens, Alabama. Mr. Baker had just purchased this new “experimental” amphibious plane, and was out for a training flight with its owner, pilot James Don Langford, who was also killed.
The small two-seat Colyaer S100 Freedom, a light sport plane made in Spain, went into the Tennessee River south of Limestone County shortly before 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
By the time rescue workers got there, the plane was upside down in five feet of water about 200 yards from where it hit the water. Both victims were still strapped into their seats and the plane had partially collapsed around them.
Anthony Baker was a very well-liked, quiet sort of man, basically a shy man with passionate interests, including flying. Another of his passions was residential architecture and the architectural history of the development of Long Island as an area of estates. He co-edited with Robert MacKay and Carol Traymor, a major anthology “Long Island Country Houses and Their Architects, 1860 -1940.”
Anthony was a scion of a famous American New York banking family. He was a gentle man and wore his heritage with a modesty that used to be admired as a measure of class and aristocracy. His great-grandfather George F. Baker started First National City Bank in the last quarter of the 19th century, which over the years has morphed into what is known as Citigroup today. Great-grandfather Baker provided much of the initial funding for the Harvard Business School. The Baker Library at Dartmouth is named for him, as is Baker Field at Columbia University.
Tragedy has stalked the male line of the Baker family for decades. Anthony’s father, George F. Baker Jr., shot himself to death in 1977 at his 13,000-acre plantation in Florida. He was 62. Twenty-eight years before on the same property, Baker Jr.’s younger brother Grenville Kane Baker was killed by a bullet in the head, not self-inflicted. Three years ago, Anthony Baker’s older brother, George Baker III, also a very experienced pilot, was killed piloting his plane into the Nantucket airport on an especially bad night for navigation.
Mr. Baker, who was sixty-five, is survived by his daughters Asia Alexandra and Callie Frances Victoria Baker, mother Frances Drexel Munn Baker, his sisters Pauline Baker Boardman Pitt, Lavinia Baker Logan, and Kane Kendall Baker, and his friend Mona de Sayve, whom he was planning to marry in the near future. He will be missed by many. |
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