Shadow the Great Gatsby: His NYC Hot-Spots

  • May 10, 2013
Shadow the Great Gatsby: His NYC Hot-Spots
Some highlights:

• Gatsby liked New York grand dame The Plaza and the hotel has returned the favor, creating an F. Scott Fitzgerald suite. make a special trip for tea in the Palm Court where characters Nick Carraway and flapper Jordan Baker rendezvoused. While you're there, check out the hotel's exhibit of props and costumes from the movie as well as the 20s barware and Deco décor on sale in the boutique.

• A few blocks south is the New York Palace hotel, memorialized by Gossip Girl, the aughts answer to Gatsby society.

• Further downtown is the Gramercy Park Hotel, the nexus of New York party and privilege, where Bogart got hitched, Babe Ruth got drunk and the Kennedys once lived.

• Dinner? Book the secret wine room of the 21 Club, once New York's most famous speakeasy. A waiter inserts a skewer into a crack in a cement wall to open a secret door into the wine room, which holds 2,000 cases of wine, including the private collections of Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Gabor and Sammy Davis Jr.

• Check out the McKittrick Hotel, site of the immersive theater experience Sleep No More (book in advance). If you're headed to the city June 15-16th or August 17-18th, take the short ferry over to leafy Governor's Island for the Jazz Age Lawn Party. Costumed New Yorkers dip into picnic baskets amid 20s motorcars and antique gramophones while cool cats dance the Charleston to jazz band Michael Arenella and His Dreamland Orchestra. Not your bag? Then kick back on a 20s wooden yacht, the de rigeur toy of Jazz Age oil barons and Wall Street tycoons. They offer leisurely Sunday brunch cruises, circumnavigating Manhattan, as well as evening jazz sails.