THE CONSERVATORY

The Conservatory is a morning in mid to late December among the glasshouses of New York, before the doors open: palms under glass while the year is at its coldest, and breakfast taken in the warm.

It exists for the hour in a glasshouse when the city outside is at its coldest and the air inside is kept, for the palms, at “high temperature and high humidity”.

The Glasshouses

The New York Botanical Garden, in the Bronx, began with a visit. Nathaniel Lord Britton and Elizabeth Gertrude Britton went to Kew in 1888, and in 1891 the Garden was established, with Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan among its first officers. Its glasshouse was designed by Lord & Burnham, chiefly by William R. Cobb, in the Italian Renaissance style, after Kew’s Palm House and Paxton’s Crystal Palace. Ground was broken on 3 January 1899, and it was finished in 1902 for $177,000, in steel, cast iron, wood and glass. It has been a city landmark since 1976.

By 1978 it was to be pulled down. Enid Annenberg Haupt gave five million dollars to restore it and five million to endow it, and it was renamed for her that year. Its galleries now take a visitor “over mountains from wet western slopes, up through the rainforest and down into the desert”, and the palm dome holds palms, cycads and ferns that need “high temperature and high humidity”.

In winter the glass holds trains. The Holiday Train Show began in 1992 “as a modest seasonal display”; in its thirty-fifth year it runs from 14 November 2026 to 10 January 2027. Nearly two hundred landmarks of New York are built in it from leaves, seeds, twigs, bark, acorns and cinnamon sticks, among them buildings the city has lost, the first Yankee Stadium and the original Penn Station, and One Vanderbilt is new this year. G-scale trains run on trestles overhead and across a Brooklyn Bridge. Members of the Garden are let in early, at nine, on most weekends and on 27 November and 28 December to 4 January, before the public.

Brooklyn has its own glass. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden was founded in 1910, under its director Charles Stuart Gager, who wanted “an animated textbook in botany”, on a plan by the Olmsted Brothers. Its Laboratory Building and Conservatory, in the Tuscan Revival manner by McKim, Mead & White, is now its Administration Building and Palm House, and the Steinhardt Conservatory was finished in 1988. The Palm House, “glass-walled”, is let for private evenings.

The Morning

One morning in mid to late December, among the glasshouses, before the doors open. The Court keeps no house of its own.

Palms under glass, while the year is at its coldest.

Breakfast is taken in the warm.

What Is Asked

A lounge suit. Nothing is published for a morning under glass; the Court keeps to the lounge suit, in a lighter cloth, since the palm dome is kept at “high temperature and high humidity”. Overcoats are left at the door.

Nobody is pitched at breakfast.

The Places

The number of places and the sum are stated in the invitation.

The New York Botanical Garden is at 2900 Southern Boulevard, in the Bronx. From 28 December to 4 January its tickets are timed, and the glass is at its busiest.

The Court’s Black Tie Dinner falls in the same weeks.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.