Hells Kitchen .bz

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Walking tours and lunch at the Algonquin Hotel's Round Table are held almost every month in the spring, summer and fall.
Walks are held rain or shine.
Meet in the Algonquin Hotel lobby, 11:45 AM Private tours are also available. Please contact Kevin directly to arrange a private walk for groups of two to thirty via email: kevin AT dorothyparker DOT com.

The Algonquin Round Table comes alive in the only New York walking tour devoted to the famed literary group. The two-hour walk celebrates Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Harpo Marx, Edna Ferber, Franklin P. Adams, Heywood Broun, Harold Ross, Robert Sherwood, Marc Connelly and the rest of the Vicious Circle.
The tour is open to the public, beginning and ending at the landmark Algonquin Hotel. Besides Hell's Kitchen, the tour encompasses the Theatre District, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square. Guests will see the former homes, haunts and hangouts of the Vicious Circle of the 1920s. See where The New Yorker began, visit the spots where the speakeasies once stood, and walk in the footsteps of the legendary wits. The walks are led by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, author of "A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York". It is recommended walkers wear comfortable shoes as the walk encompasses approximately 30 blocks. Immediately following the walking tour guests have the option of having lunch at the Round Table. A highlight of the tour is the house at 412 West 47th Street. One of the most influential magazines in American literature and pop culture, <I>The New Yorker, </I> was started in 1925 at this house in Hell's Kitchen.
Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant, bought the house in September, 1923. Among the communal residents living in the house was the iconoclastic drama critic, Aleck Woollcott. The pair had been in World War I together and worked on an Army newspaper. When he was 30, Ross founded <I>The New Yorker</I> and continued as its editor until his death in 1951.

Dorothy Parker was among the close group of friends from the Algonquin Round Table who helped Ross launch the magazine and she and her boyfriend, Charlie MacArthur (who would go on to write <I>The Front Page</I>) and Harpo Marx set up a street carousel on West 47th Street for neighborhood kids. Charlie handed out handbills inviting passerby inside for a party. When Parker was onboard The New Yorker, it was a gathering of the best writers in the country. She was in the company of Ogden Nash, A.J. Liebling, John O'Hara and Ring Lardner. And although The New Yorker offices were elsewhere, it was in this Hell's Kitchen house that many hours were spent editing and working on the magazine.

The Ross house was the scene of many parties and gatherings after theater evenings. Parker was a frequent visitor, and the magazine helped cement her place as a writer and poet.

Kevin C. Fitzpatrick