Almost each spring for over 20 years now, a young ritual has taken place in a leafy plaza within the Turtle Bay space of Midtown Manhattan.
It’s the Katharine Hepburn Backyard Celebration, a posthumous birthday celebration for the four-time Academy Award-winning actress, who was a beloved member of the neighborhood till she died in 2003. The gathering is held on the backyard named after Hepburn that’s nestled inside Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, and final weekend, dozens of loyal aged native residents got here out to toast her 117th 12 months.
An indication bearing a portrait of Hepburn that welcomed company to the occasion learn: “Rejoice Kate’s Birthday. Cake, Espresso and Dwell Music!” The flier pinned to a group board famous: “Put in your dancing footwear. Put on your spring hat.”
Hepburn’s outdated neighbors sat in rows of folding chairs whereas they tapped their ft to a jazz band that performed tunes like “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Cheek to Cheek.” Volunteers from the Turtle Bay Affiliation and Buddies of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza handed out Katharine Hepburn pins and slices of cake. Close by, an informational signal included factoids about Hepburn’s life, black-and-white images of her working errands within the neighborhood and biographical chapter headings like “Tomboy at Coronary heart” and “Tree Hugger.”
Relishing the sunny afternoon’s birthday festivities was Ethel Bendove, 89, a retired accountant.
“I nonetheless keep in mind one chilly winter day years in the past after I noticed a lady shoveling snow, and I seen that she was carrying a stunning pair of shoes,” Ms. Bendove stated. “Then I noticed it was Katharine Hepburn. She stated good day to me after which went again to her shoveling. I assume it shocked me to see her doing that, and I by no means forgot it.”
To the congregants of this birthday gathering, Hepburn was not solely a legend of American cinema, she was additionally an on a regular basis New Yorker, one who took out her trash and shoveled her personal snow, similar to everybody else. (Nicely, besides that she did so exterior a four-story townhouse, anyway.)
For some 60 years, Hepburn’s Manhattan residence was her brownstone at 244 East forty ninth Road, and when she wasn’t making motion pictures with Spencer Tracy or difficult conventional notions of femininity by carrying turtlenecks and trousers, she was an energetic member of the Turtle Bay Affiliation.
With the identical outspokenness that made her a roguish determine in Hollywood, Hepburn advocated stopping the destruction of bushes on her avenue and the event of skyscrapers within the neighborhood. She additionally had a inexperienced thumb. Rising up, she loved choosing bloodroot and lily of the valley from hills alongside the Connecticut River, and he or she transplanted her love of nature to town, planting wildflowers in her townhouse’s yard.
When Hepburn was 90, the Parks Division devoted the inexperienced house tucked inside Dag Hammarskjold Plaza to her. The small oasis, which was designed by the panorama architect George Vellonakis, is little recognized to even the savviest New Yorkers, and it has the texture of a secret backyard.
Its footpath is lined with steppingstones inscribed with Hepburnisms like “Enemies are so stimulating” and “Generally I’m wondering if women and men actually go well with one another. Maybe they need to dwell subsequent door and simply go to every now and then.” A wall shows tablets engraved with scenes from Hepburn classics like “The Philadelphia Story” and “Little Girls.” There’s additionally a bench that when belonged to Hepburn’s nation house in Previous Saybrook that her property donated to the backyard after her dying.
“As soon as for lunch she invited me and Millie Margiotta of the Turtle Bay Affiliation to her Connecticut house, and after I noticed the bench, I advised her lawyer we’d like to have it for the backyard in the future, and he stated it was all ours if we needed it,” Mr. Vellonakis recalled in a telephone interview. “After she handed away, the bench by chance went to public sale, and we needed to get Lauren Bacall to assist us get it again for the backyard.”
Final weekend because the celebration started to bop, a number of audio system shared their remembrances of Hepburn’s legacy with the gang.
“Her mom was a suffragette,” stated Anne Hersh, a founder and director of Buddies of Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. “And he or she would take Katharine Hepburn when she was just a bit woman, and he or she can be anticipated at hand out posies to individuals to ask them to vote, to let ladies have the vote.”
Sabrina Seidner, an actual property dealer who’s an alum of Hepburn’s alma mater, Bryn Mawr School, recounted how Hepburn impressed campus traditions like skinny dipping in a fountain after finals, and that she wore pants to the faculty’s commencement ceremony in 1985.
“It was a special occasion,” Ms. Seidner stated. “And one of many issues she stated to all of us was, ‘You go on the market in the actual world, you’re going to get knocked down, however simply don’t get knocked up.’”
Mark Levine, the Manhattan Borough president, took a second to handle a subject of concern for some: the inexperienced scaffolding at the moment slicing off a section of the park, which had been put in upfront of facade work required on a constructing abutting the backyard.
“I’m going to do all the things I can to get this down and to get it down as quickly as doable,” Mr. Levine stated. “Now we have 4,000 scaffolds up all through Manhattan. It’s an epidemic.”
The gang cheered.
Because the jazz band, Peter & the Grasp Keys, resumed swinging, company continued to reminisce about Hepburn’s life in Turtle Bay.
Meryl Brodsky, an economics coverage analyst, recalled Hepburn’s generally salty relationship along with her neighbor Stephen Sondheim, who died in 2021, and lived in an adjoining townhouse that lately offered for $7 million.
“There’s a narrative about how Sondheim would grouse about her threatening to name the police on him as a result of he preferred composing on his piano within the wee hours of the night time,” Ms. Brodsky stated. “She hated it.”
Then Ms. Brodsky turned to Ms. Hersh to ask about her favourite Hepburn film.
“‘The African Queen’ is mine,” she stated. “What’s your favourite, Anne?”
“Perhaps ‘Adam’s Rib,’” Ms. Hersh replied.
“‘Adam’s Rib’ is so nice.”
“Bear in mind after we screened it out right here?” Ms. Hersh stated. “Everybody was right here. That obtained a giant turnout.”
Additionally having fun with the birthday festivities was Robert Rosenblatt, an leisure lawyer. His two miniature schnauzers, Uggy and Princess, stored him firm.
Mr. Rosenblatt stated that he by no means had the luck of encountering Hepburn within the neighborhood, however that the backyard’s existence all the time let him really feel near her.
“The closest I ever obtained to assembly Hepburn is sitting on her bench,” he stated. “This neighborhood nonetheless has her glow and beauty to today, partly as a result of she was so dedicated to this group, and I nonetheless really feel that grace every time I sit on her bench within the backyard.”
