January 17, 2007
St. Regis' 'Old King Cole' sent off for stain-removal
 The famed "Old King Cole” mural in the St. Regis bar was removed Tuesday and replaced with a copy so the century-old oil painting can be restored, according to the New York Times.
Covered in grime, nicotine, and a few careless splashes of alcohol, the Maxfield Parrish masterwork also suffers from cracking and a few dents.
The 8-foot-tall, 30-foot-wide mural has repaired to a Chelsea studio for a six-week, $100,000 restorative stay. The King Cole Bar itself is getting a $400,000 makeover as part of an 18-month, $35 million refurbishment of the St. Regis.
Now valued at $12 million, the three-paned mural was originally commissioned for John Jacob Astor Knickerbocker hotel on Times Square. When the Knickerbocker was converted into offices (though it was purchased last summer with the idea of turning it back into a hotel,) the painting was moved to the St. Regis in the mid-1930’s.
Besides name-dropping the hotel's legendary guests -- Ernest Hemingway, Marlene Dietrich, Salvador Dalí, Marilyn Monroe Joe DiMaggio, John Lennon and Yoko Ono -- the Times relates another legend:
The legend, repeated by generations of bar patrons, is that the king’s sheepish grin, and the startled reactions of his knights, were occasioned by the flatulence of the monarch. Some versions of the this tale, passed on through the decades, hold that there was a satirical competition among the well-known artists of Parrish’s era to find a way to depict this condition in a painting, a contest that Parrish is reputed to have won. The bar is also famous as the home of the bloody mary. The drink is said "to have been brought to the St. Regis by Fernand Petiot, who invented it in Paris," as the Times puts it.
The St. Regis is located 2 E. 55th St., map.
January 17, 2007 10:56 AM in Architecture, Drinkology, History, Hotelology, Midtown
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