Nowhere in New York will you find such a coterie of cosmopolites, such a consistently smart and impressive collection of people of 'breeding' as gathers daily for luncheon at the Colony.
—George Ross, 1934[1] Located on Sixty-first Street off Madison Avenue, The Colony was founded in 1919 by Joseph Pani,[2][3] who sold it to employees Ernest Cerutti, Alfred Hartmann, and Gene Cavallero, Sr in 1922.
[6] Among its noted customers were Groucho Marx, Dick Cavett,[7] the Vanderbilts, Preston Sturges, Mike Todd, Fulco di Verdura, Hattie Carnegie, Carmel Snow, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Elsie de Wolfe, Mrs. Irving Berlin, Millicent Rogers, Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Betsey Whitney, George Vanderbilt, Samuel Newhouse, Marlene Dietrich, Lucius Beebe, Rosalind Russell, Gary Cooper, Carol Channing, Richard Nixon, C.Z.
Guest, Ernest Hemingway, Luis Miguel Dominguin, Walter Wanger, John Ringling North, Frank Sinatra, Aristotle Onassis, the Duke of Windsor, the Duchess of Windsor, Merle Oberon, Vincent Astor, Elsa Maxwell, Rex Harrison, Richard Widmark, Errol Flynn, Babe Paley, Frank Shields, Frank Costello, J. Edgar Hoover, Orson Welles, Gilbert Miller, Joan Crawford, Mia Farrow, Serge Obolensky, Charles Revson, Leona Helmsley, John Wayne, Oleg Cassini, Grace Kelly, Jean Howard, Clarence Brown, Walter Wanger, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Lee Radziwill, Gloria Guinness, Betsy Bloomingdale, Amanda Burden, Jean Shrimpton, Jill St. John, Truman Capote, and Billy Baldwin.
—John Fairchild, editor of Women's Wear Daily, 1960s[5] When The Colony closed on December 4, 1971, many of its faithful patrons attended.