Thomas F. Harney

[Linda Anderson]

The Nov 8, 2013 New York Times Disunion article titled "The Russians Are Coming!" describes the "grand ball" and supper "for the officers of the Russian fleet at anchor in New York."

"The organizers spared no expense. Over 1,200 gas burners illuminated the building’s interior. Dressing rooms for women featured maids to attend to 'the multitude of tears, and rips, and damages which dresses are liable to.'Hairdressers for both men and women were in attendance, as was 'a corps' of bootblacks. The stage on which Ms. Borgia had expired just hours earlier was now enclosed 'in a white ornamented tent, thirty feet high'that framed a trompe l’oeil scene of a “terrace, garden, and lake by moonlight...
"Irving Hall, a building adjacent to and connected with the Academy by a covered walkway, was the setting for a supper catered by Delmonico, the city’s premier restaurant. Beginning at 11 p.m., guests could partake from a menu that, according to an account of the 'principal edibles' in Harper’s Weekly, included 12,000 oysters, 12 'monster' salmon of 30 pounds each, 1,200 game birds, 250 turkeys, 400 chickens, a half ton of tenderloin, 100 pastry 'pyramids,' 1,000 loaves of bread and 3,500 bottles of wine. Each heavily laden table was, in the words of a reporter for The New York Herald, 'triumphant proof of the ability of our great caterer, and excelled all previous displays of the kind.'

"This evening of lavish entertainment was the culminating moment in a series of events – a visit by Mary Lincoln to the Russian frigate Osliaba in New York Harbor on Sept. 16; a Fifth Avenue parade on Oct. 1; and two banquets at Astor House —to celebrate the unexpected arrival of six Russian warships just weeks earlier."

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...re-coming/