Hilfiger flips

His house at 30 John Street, listed at $47.5 million, is pending after 61-days on the market. When this listing was first mentioned, brother Anthony sent along the following reminiscence:

I just realized this property used to be the Joseph Hirshorn estate. That brings back memories of my junior year at GHS, when a number of students involved in the arts were selected, at Hirshorn's behest, by the arts faculty to take a tour of his sculpture collection. I think by then he had already donated everything to the people of the United States and was awaiting the completion of the building and grounds in Washington to hold them.

Anyway, I made the cut somehow and one November day drove up to the Hirshorn place in my Datsun pickup, accompanied by Mrs. Madugno, my music theory teacher. I was immediately impressed when, upon reaching the end of the long driveway, noticed Rodin's "Burgers of Calais" [some sort of riff on MacDonald’s? - ED] sitting in the middle of the turnaround.

I think we were separated into several manageable groups to take the tour, led, I assume, by various art experts, but I, and a few others, were fortunate enough to be taken around by Mr. Hirshorn himself, who was a most entertaining character. I still remember us all crowding into his wife Olga's bathroom and his pointing out a bunch of small objects on the tub: "Olga's bath toys!" he proudly told us, explaining they were carved and given to her by Picasso. All in all, an unforgettable day.

It's things like that which remind me how privileged we were to grow up in Greenwich, even if we later chose to live elsewhere.

It should be noted that when Antn’y speaks of “privilege”, he doesn’t necessarily mean white privilege — our little pickaninny was actually adopted by the family after he followed us home from Harlem, where my parents used to take us occasionally so that we’d learn that “the poor have their troubles, as well as the rich.”

Of course, growing up in Chateau Fontaine with its fleet of chauffeured Bentleys and unlimited personal American Express cards for each child probably did lead the little tyke to think that we were living a pleasant life, and we sheltered him from our own deep, personal angst, to protect him, and preserve his innocent gratitude. And it worked, obviously.