From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974). The Central Park Casino was “a quiet little night club,” built for Mayor Jimmy Walker and friends in what had once been a “Ladies Refreshment Salon” in Central Park:
But the Casino was more than a restaurant or a night club. The Casino was Jimmy Walker’s Versailles. Friends joked that the Mayor spent more time there than he did at City Hall. When his limousine pulled into view, the doorman would scurry inside and signal the orchestra, so that when Beau James and Betty entered, it would be to strains of “Will You Love Me in December?” Holding hands with Betty, sipping champagne while she sipped beer, the Mayor would receive the parade of visitors to his table with careless ease, and sometimes, when Betty asked him to dance, he would even arise, pinch-waisted and slim in the tuxedo with the shiny lapels that people were beginning to copy, and glide with her around the floor.Caro adds: “Mrs. Walker’s place was apparently Florida, the state to which she had been packed off for an extended vacation.” One person in Manhattan, one in Florida: shades of a contemporary couple.
Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Raindrop.io)
[Betty: Walker’s mistress, Betty “Monk” Compton.]
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