March 23, 1960

 

Franklin Pierce Adams died on March 23, 1960. No doubt even then he was being forgotten, but Adams, and his influential newspaper column, The Conning Tower, was at one time an indispensable guide to the literary life of New York City. It was he for instance who first drew attention to the literary crowd that lunched at the Algonquin Hotel. This was in the 1920's and predated the adoption by the Algonquin owner of a resident cat, because the first feline to run the hotel was a stray who sought shelter there in the late 1930s. That cat is not forgotten.