white’, the journalist explained. ‘The panels of the walls, the hangings,
and coverings of the furniture are in crimson Beresford brocade, and the
comfortable chairs and lounges, tall cool palms and tasteful screens make
this withdrawing room the ideal of comfort for the rapidly increasing
race described by our transatlantic cousins as club women.’^24 New York’s
first all-female club, the Colony Club, the interior of which was designed
by the pioneer interior decorator, Elsie de Wolfe, was opened on Madison
Avenue two years later. The decorator herself described the socially aspir -
ational, yet eminently domestic atmosphere of the entrance hall: ‘The first
impression’, she explained, ‘is that which one receives in the old Virginia
mansions, so dignified is the treatment of the panelled walls, the selection
of old mahogany furniture, the color scheme of green and white and
mahogany.’^25 In the club’s garden restaurant, de Wolfe created a fashionable
inside/outside space, complete with ivy-clad terracing and a decorative
fountain, such as might be found in the conservatory of an early twentieth-
century country house.
Other urban sites of modernity for women in the period – restaur -
ants, tea-shops, museums and art galleries among them – offered a variety 31
Female Day Room (Ward 7 ), Northern Counties Lunatic Asylum, Inverness, Scotland,
1902.