The Steps of the Met: A Social History
Harold Koda remembers well, when he arrived in New York City in the 1970s, the first time he stood in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which would eventually become his workplace. “I was amazed by the array of steps, like a ziggurat leading up to a building four blocks long,” says the former curator in chief of the Costume Institute. “Walking up to the entrance was, for someone interested in art, like scaling the Acropolis.”
If those steps could talk they’d recount a glistening, layered social history of a city—of the grandes dames and Lily Barts, of the movie stars and queen bees, of the villains and heroes who have made it to the summit.
One of the more ambitious social mountaineers returns next year. That’s right, Upper East Siders: Gossip Girl is back. The delicious teen soap that delighted the blogging generation gets a reboot on HBO Max for the streaming era. Just in time for the museum’s 150th anniversary, some OG gossip girls (and boys) indulge in a brief oral history of their time on the steps of the Met.
Prep School Confidential
When the architect Kevin Roche, who died earlier this year, added the majestic staircase, 154 feet wide and 13? feet tall, in 1975, he could scarcely have imagined that the steps would be immediately colonized by the pupils of the nearby private schools.
Olivia Palermo, graduate of the -Nightingale-Bamford School: They were like Mount Everest to me as a little girl—a challenge meant to be conquered.
Nicky Hilton Rothschild, graduate of Convent of the Sacred Heart school: All the Spence girls, the Hewitt girls, and the St. David’s boys would congregate there after school on a Friday and talk about our weekend plans and hang out. People loved getting a tan on those steps.
David Netto, interior designer, graduate of the Buckley School: In the ’80s kids from private schools used to gather on the steps to smoke in their Unique Boutique topcoats, and I would have them come up in shifts to my parents’ apartment. We’d watch from the windows on the eighth floor to see who was cute and ask them to come up, like a teenage Studio 54 doorman situation. This is how I met my wife Elizabeth. She and some other Brearley girls came upstairs soaking wet from the fountains, and I gave her a dry blue shirt to put on. Perry Ellis, I still remember.
Elizabeth Angell, Town & Country’s digital director and Brearley School graduate: My high school class took its senior picture on the steps. We walked over en masse, and lined up, half on one side of a banister and half on the other, the brass railing lining up perfectly with the gutter of our yearbook page. It must have been the last time we were all together in one place that wasn’t school, before some of us left New York for good and the rest of us decided that New York is the only place we could ever live.
On the Steps of the Palace
By 2003 some of the world’s biggest movie stars were invading the steps every first Monday in May.
Lauren Santo Domingo, co-founder of Moda Operandi: I’m so old I remember the Met gala before the red carpet. There was just a city sidewalk and stone steps for the procession.
Harold Koda: Now, on the night of the Costume Institute gala, the challenge on the Met stairs is no longer to be photographed—it’s to become a meme.
Anna Wintour: I remember all the unforgettable arrivals: Rihanna’s Guo Pei cape in 2015; Beyoncé practically naked in Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy; Caroline Kennedy, who had just served as United States ambassador to Japan, in that extraordinary Comme des Gar?ons creation in 2017. I always loved Stella Mc-Cartney and Liv Tyler coming in “Rock Royalty” T-shirts for 1999’s “Rock Style.” Stella told me that she didn’t have any idea what she was coming to. She hadn’t really done her hair or makeup, which was perfect.
Selby Drummond, head of fashion and beauty at Snapchat and Spence graduate: My husband was my date this year to the Met gala, and he looked up those stairs and was like, “Wait, I don’t want to do this. Can I go around?” “No, honey, there’s no way around. You have to just go up the stairs.”
Uptown’s Washington Square
Beyond When Harry Met Sally and The Thomas Crown Affair, it was a teen soap in 2007 that permanently etched the steps in the cultural firmament.
Stephanie Savage, co-creator of the Gossip Girl television series: In the pilot, the first scene is Blair on the steps with her minions telling Serena that she’s not invited to the “kiss on the lips” party. When we saw that scene come together, we had a good sense of the show we were making. You had this controlled space that literally had levels to it, a visual ladder that you could see people climbing. There was definitely the sense that the higher the step, the more powerful the girl.
Cecily von Ziegesar, author of the Gossip Girl book series, and Nightingale--Bamford alum: The steps have become iconic for the fans of the show and the fans of the books. For us the steps were very much a place in the neighborhood where you could just sit down. For me it wasn’t iconic; it was just there. -Serena’s house is based on where my friend lived, across the street from the Met. We would hang out there because it was a place to wait for her to come outside. All of Fifth Avenue was kind of laid out before you.
Paul Goldberger, architecture critic: Somehow the steps have become a kind of piazza with its own existence, not separate from the Met, and yet, on the other hand, sort of separate from the Met. People seem to hang out there whether or not they’re going into the museum. It’s certainly a lot more than just a way in and a way out.
This story appears in the December 2019/January 2020 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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