The Cliff Dwellers Spectator / Endangered Species
Coyne, John R. Jr.
Endangered Species Chicago J n his splendid Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher (1979), Henry Regnery spoke of the often tense relationship between Chicago's culture and commerce, between the...
...This space is not just some fungible, ordinary, runof-the-mill leasable space somewhere," writes club president Chester Davis...
...the club could stay in its penthouse headquarters in perpetuity-that is, as long as it could pay rent, which it pays to the tune of more than $60,000 a year...
...The history of the Cliff Dwellers is an integral part of the cultural history of Chicago...
...This last occasion, writes Regnery (himself a member), was "one of those great Cliff Dweller occasions, on the order of the dinner given at the Cliff Dwellers in 1914 by Harriet Monroe to honor William Butler Yeats, on which occasion Vachel Lindsay came up from Springfield and read a new poem, The Congo, with such eloquence and expression that one of the waiters fainted...
...And if Henry Regnery were a bald eagle, his aerie would be safe...
...According to John McDermott, a member and director of the club, relations between the Orchestra Association and the club have always been warm but informal...
...As part of the agreement, says McDermott, by John R. Coyne, Jr...
...To the right, where a Garland portrait hangs over a working fireplace, is a dark-paneled sitting room...
...Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson III, John Drew, Otis Skinner, A. Lawrence Lowell, Jan Paderewski...
...It was the tension between the two worlds that led to the birth of one of the world's great clubs, and it is the same tension that now may lead to its demise...
...0 n a clear day, from the windows that line the eastern wall and from the ten-ace, there is a wonderful view-the gardens of the Art Institute to the north, Soldier Field and Shedd Aquarium to the south, and straight ahead, Lake Michigan, all of it-and on the right day, with good eyes, Michigan itself...
...On the north wall, looking down at the diners, is the head of a gaur-an ugly, fat Southeast Asian cow, with big horns and a baleful, red-eyed expression, much like Sonny Liston...
...In so doing, the Cliff Dwellers had made a distinct contribution to the life of the city...
...Frank Lloyd Wright was a charter member, and it was here that the architect Louis Sullivan, penniless and without commissions, sat at an oak desk to write his splendid memoirs, Autobiography of an Idea...
...The Cliff Dwellers has over the years served as a congenial place to bring people professionally engaged in music, art, literature, and architecture together with others seriously interested in such matters as non-professionals, which was one of its principal purposes...
...The elevator takes you to the eighth floor of Orchestra Hall...
...To the left, the dining room, with its bleached-oak tables along a line of picture windows facing a narrow terrace...
...O 78 The American Spectator March 1995...
...Then you walk up thirtyone marble steps, along walls lined with mementos, letters, and photographs John R. Coyne, Jr...
...Among its visitors and contributors have been Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, George Santayana, Theodore Dreiser, Igor Stravinsky, and William F. Buckley, Jr., who came at Regnery's invitation to play the harpsichord...
...As the result of a gentleman's agreement adopted in the 1920s, when the director of the Symphony was also president of the Cliff Dwellers Club, the Chicago Symphony became the club's landlord...
...George Ade relaxed here, as did Carl Sandburg and James Whitcomb Riley...
...It is unique and uniquely ours...
...Henry Fogel, the Orchestra's executive director, sees no reason why the club can't move, and offers to help it find space...
...Then right and through the door, into a long, 3,500square-foot room...
...In May, the Orchestra Association, the club's landlord, told club directors that the Cliff Dwellers had two years notice to vacate: "The Orchestral Association plans to create a private club for use by its major donors...
...The Cliff Dwellers Club was founded in 1907 by novelist Hamlin Garland to bring together "painters, sculptors, novelists, poets, musicians, architects, historians, illustrators" with "distinguished men in other professions...
...In his history of the club, Regnery sums it up in this way: It has now been more than eighty years that the club...
...A high price, indeed, for a developer's dream and a room with a view...
...is author of The Kumquat Statement (Cowles) and The Impudent Snobs (Arlington House...
...Since its founding, the club has remained essentially unchanged...
...has occupied the penthouse on the top of Orchestra Hall, its fine view of Lake Michigan overlooking Grant Park still unimpaired...
...But in other quarters, the club simply wouldn't be the club...
...If the logic underlying much of today's trendy debate were extended to the human race, then it would seem that art and culture and the systems that sustain them would be treated by definition as a part of the human ecosystem...
...Endangered Species Chicago J n his splendid Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher (1979), Henry Regnery spoke of the often tense relationship between Chicago's culture and commerce, between the artistic impulse and a deeply ingrained Midwestern work ethic...
...A marvelous view, and in any city in the world, one worth a great deal of money...
...The space currently occupied by the Cliff Dwellers is the only workable location...
...But because he's a Cliff Dweller, he and his fellow club members are being faced with eviction-and quite possibly, social and cultural extinction...
Vol. 28 • March 1995 • No. 3
