Delano & Aldrich

I'm a great fan of Delano & Aldrich, a firm that was, I suppose, the Robert A.M. Stern of the 1920s. William Adams Delano could have been a J.C. Leyendecker illustration (think: Arrow Shirt ads, ca. 1922) - urbane, well born, sophisticated, with a lot of taste and talent. I've never had the pleasure of living in a Delano-designed house. He was a big Georgian Revival guy, and a man who turned restraint into a hallmark of luxury. No easy feat. Here are a few good D & A houses - High Lawn in Lenox, MA; Oak Knoll outside Oyster Bay on Long Island; Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's studio in Westbury (view from the air); Willard Straight's house on Fifth Avenue and 94th St (recently returned to single family use); and one of theirmost famous clubs, the Knickerbocker on Fifth Avenue and 62nd St.