Business: Dresser

Back in pre-War days, when lovely ladies popping out of lamb pot pies were the last word in social depravity, a notable group of young Manhattan sporting gentlemen gathered one day at the Metropolitan Club. Outside stood a jet-black coach & four which was to carry them the 206 miles to Newport, there to play polo at Oakland, Mr. Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt’s big farm.

Tossing off their last highball, the gay sportsmen mounted the coach and dashed up Fifth Avenue. The entire distance to Newport was covered at a full gallop, Mr. William Goadby Loew tooling the coach most of the way. Horses were changed 21 times, which meant the use of no less than 84 beasts in all. Not since Oliver Gould Jennings (who was also in the party) tooled 406 miles to Shelburne, Vt. in the 1890’s had there been such a record-breaking coaching run.

Last week Mr. William Goadby Loew was some 25 years older, somewhat heavier, a great deal richer and a grandfather. Nevertheless, few accounts of any first flight social event, on field, track or ballroom floor, fail to mention the presence of the William Goadby Loews.* Mr. Loew stemmed from the ancient & honorable Manhattan Goadbys and his father was once comptroller of the City of New YorK. He is a member of a dozen clubs including the Brook, the Creek and the River. Mrs. Florence (“Queenie”) Loew was the daughter of the late great George Fisher Baker.

Mr. Loew, outside the society pages, is a stockbroker with a firm of his own at No. 2 Wall Street. He is supposed to handle the brokerage business of the Baker interests, including First National Bank. Sometimes he is annoyed on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange by convivial members who slap his ramrod back, rudely asking why he works.

How much money old Mr. Baker gave his daughter or his son-in-law before he died no one knows. But certainly the Loews’ way of life changed not at all after Mr. Baker left $5,000,000 to Mrs. William Goadby Loew. In Manhattan they have a house on 93rd Street next door to Mrs. Graham Fair Vanderbilt. They also have a Newport mansion and an estate at Old Westbury, where Mrs. Loew raises prize narcissi.

Last week Mr. William Goadby Loew won the leadership in another, if allied, field when a “jury” of tailors queried by Associated Press picked him as the best-dressed man in the U. S. Mr. Loew has been cited for his sartorial splendor on numerous occasions but last week he stepped out ahead of such tailors’ patrons as Publisher Conde Nast, Philadelphia’s Edward Townsend Stotesbury, Senator David A. Reed, Douglas Fairbanks.

*No kin to the late great Marcus Loew, Jewish fur dealer who became a tycoon in the cinema world.