OCTOBER 18, 1935-Ernie Takes in a $30,000 Dinner Party, but He’s a Bit Late
Walsh Mansion
THE WASHINGTON DAILY NEWS — FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1935
Ernie Takes in a $30,000 Dinner Party, but He’s a Bit Late
By ERNIE PYLE
There were only about 50 people at the party. The Russian Ambassador was guest of honor. Everything was done in gold, the splendor of the decorations was like a sunrise, and the golden table ornaments were so high you couldn’t see who sat across from you.
They had calla lilies imported from England, and orchids were drooping all around from everywhere like waterfalls. And after the long, gay dinner, the guests went up on the fourth floor to the private theater, and heard Alma Gluck sing.
It was one of the grandest parties Washington has ever seen, and it is said that it cost $30,000.
It being de trop in our circle to arrive on time at any social function, I was a little late getting to the party.
I was awfully late. In fact, the party had been over nearly 25 years when I walked in. But I finally made it, and let it be forever spread on the record that I have today stood in a house where they gave a party that cost 30 grand.
The party was in the old Walsh mansion, on uppity Massachusetts-av. It was given on the night of Feb. 8, 1912, by the then recently married Mr. and Mrs. Ned McLean. It was their first party after the death of Mrs. McLean’s father, old Tom Walsh, the Colorado metal king. They gave many, many parties there after that, and always they were of the glittering, glamorous variety that kept Washington talking for days.
But another party is going on in that fabulous mansion now. There are more than 300 guests there, and they get paid for attending. I don’t know how much the party is going to cost.
The 300 are guests of the Suburban Division of the Resettlement Administration, but they have to work for their dinner, figuring out low-cost housing projects, and how to get poor people out of the city, and such common stuff as that.
Where the huge gold-laden dining table used to sit, there are now dozens of vulgar green-top desks, with executives and stenographers at them, looking so serious, as tho they might have to pay for the party themselves.
Up on the top floor, where the immense private theater used to be, and where on Sunday nights the Walshes or the McLeans would entertain with moving pictures, there must be easily half a hundred drafting tables, row after row, and young men in shirt sleeves bending over them, drawing lines.
And down in the basement, in the immense kitchen where the food for those $30,000 dinners was cooked, colored men in overalls and work aprons are yanking nails out of boxes, uncrating desks and typewriters and all kinds of office furniture. The kitchen range is still there.
And in the big southeast room on the second floor, where the King and Queen of Belgium lived when they were here, are more desks, and wallboard partitions, and more desks.
All over the house it’s the same story—in the reception room, where the ladies doffed their ermine and the gentlemen left their silk hats and sticks; in the music room, where the pipe organ still stands; in the billiard room, with the moose head still hanging on the wall; in the card room, in the library, in the solarium, in the big ball room, in all the vast bedrooms on the three floors upstairs—everywhere are those everlasting desks and typewriters and men and women working.
There are desks in the great hall, and even one stuck up on the landing of the ocean-liner stairway, behind a statue. They say old Tom Walsh got the idea for that stairway from a French liner the first time he crossed the ocean after he got rich. It runs up from the middle of the hall, then, half-way up, sprouts out on both sides, and goes winding on up to the high second floor.
They say the morale in this division of the Resettlement Administration is wonderful. At first the workers were self-conscious about their fine place, but now they’re used to it, and they feel as if they’re working in a fraternity house or something like that.
And they say that if you work very, very hard, and pay close attention to detail all day long, and don’t hit any wrong keys, they let you slide down the looping mahogany bannister on the way home.
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