Word: trianon
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...years, U.S. dance-band managers have waltzed attendance on a stubby voluble Chicagoan named William Karzas. An engagement at Karzas' famed "wonder ballrooms"-the Trianon on Chicago's South Side and the Aragon on the North Side-means big money (an average of $4,000 a week), and often the making of a new band...
...sound idea that 1) big cities are lonely places, and 2) the lonely men & women would .get together and dance if they did not have to patronize Chicago's scabrous dance halls. So the Karzas brothers decided to build them a dream palace, the $1,500,000 Trianon, a garish replica of the palace at Versailles. It opened in 1922 with the biggest charity ball Chicago has ever known...
...Trianon proved so profitable that the brothers laid out $1,750,000 in 1926 to build the Aragon, which features Spanish-style towers, arched balconies, and a deep blue ceiling in which stars twinkle and fleecy white clouds float around. Says Bill Karzas, who never had time to polish his English: "We think what people want, we appeal to the five senses. We give good music for ear, beautiful place for eye, fresh air for smell, good chairs for comfort, and special ice cream for taste...
...plays no instrument well. He became a bandleader for a businesslike reason: to make money. He stuck strictly to his musical last until 1941, when he began buying likely bits of property. The big break came two years later. Heidt guessed that a profitable urban Los Angeles ballroom, the Trianon, could be bought by catching the owner off guard with enough ready cash...
Hermann Oelrichs was no exception. His wife, Theresa Fair Oelrichs, began the building of Rosecliff when there were already some mighty mansions to surpass. Stanford White designed the house; Augustus Saint Gaudens built the outer court, patterned after the Petit Trianon at Versailles. There she gave her most famous party, the Bal Blanc, arranged by Ward McAllister, attended by the 400, and costing Mr. Oelrichs $30,000. Into Rosecliff she packed what Henry James called the "loot" of Europe: Gobelin tapestries, cloisonné vases, Renaissance statuary, Jacobean furniture, Sèvres china, paintings, libraries, silver sets, visiting aristocrats...