There are but seven illustrations in Frank Case’s 1938 Tales Of A Wayward Inn — the “Wayward Inn” being The Algonquin Hotel (Mr. Case owned the place back in the Round Table days). Below is one of the seven: James Thurber’s take on the Algonquin’s lounge. According to Harrison Kinney’s Thurber bio, Thurber only attended one Round Table gathering (along
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Looking through a late 1930s issue of The New Yorker this morning (the February 4, 1939 issue to be exact) my eyes were drawn to an ad for Frank Case’s Tales Of A Wayward Inn (published in 1938). I’d never seen the ad before. The Wayward Inn is The Algonquin. Frank Case was, at that time, the owner and manager.
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Back in 1980, I was booted out of my apartment on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village (see my 11th Street downstair’s neighbor, Donald Barthelme’s December 4, 1978 Talk Of The Town piece about the building’s landlord — I’m one-half of trembling “…young cohabiting couple…” he mentions). Needing a break from Manhattan I took up an offer from an illustrator
Read moreThere are a good number of places to read about the beginnings of The New Yorker by people who were there at the beginning. Jane Grant’s Ross, The New Yorker And Me is one (Ms. Grant was married to Harold Ross during the birth of the magazine), and then there’s Corey Ford’s The Time Of Laughter (mentioned here not long
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