New York Grill-Rooms 
Once a week the grill-room of the Grolier 
becomes a special point of attraction to the 
club members. The ale barrel is new 
broached that night, the church warden 
pipes are taken down and filled, the grill 
glows, and excellent things are cooked, while 
the candles burn dimmer and dimmer as the 
smoke that rises from the occupants of the 
chairs and settles thickens the air and rises 
to darken and season the exposed rafters. 
The fact that the Grolier Club is one of the 
smallest in the city makes it impossible that 
the festivities should be of nightly occurrence. 
They are sufficiently frequent, however, to 
maintain the tradition, and no sacrilegious 
hand is permitted in the name of house¬ 
cleaning to remove from the beams and 
fittings one speck of the mingled soot and 
tobacco smoke that is annually mellowing the 
room and making it the most delightful 
apartment of a singularly tasteful and charm¬ 
ing club-house. 
A New York banker resident at Mamar- 
oneck on the Sound has built what is in effect 
a billiard-room and grill-room combined. 
1 he place will have somewhat the character 
of a private club, as the owner exercises a 
wide hospitality, and will share the charms 
of the apartment with many friends. A 
barn was chosen for this interesting experi¬ 
ment. I he beams and rafters are in full 
view. There is abundant space 
for billiards, and part of what 
remains is converted to the 
uses of the grill-room. A grill 
of sufficient size for the needs 
of the place has been provided, 
and along with it all the ac¬ 
companiments and furnishings. 
As in the case of the Grolier 
grill-room, the traditions of the 
old inn kitchen and tap-room 
have been maintained. There 
is a proper display of needed 
drinking utensils; the lighting 
is especially distinctive, and the 
furniture is of the plain, but 
picturesque and comfortable 
kind characteristic of the old 
public resorts which the place 
copies. There is ample space 
for all the effects desired, and 
at the same time no lack of the 
cosiness that should mark such an apartment. 
The serious part of the problem presented was 
to obtain space and proper lighting for the bil¬ 
liard tables without sacrificing the peculiar 
character of the quiet, old-fashioned tap-room. 
Fhe success with which this problem has been 
solved constitutes the triumph of the work. 
The grill-room of the Grolier Club and the 
barn-room at Mamaroneck are both the crea¬ 
tions of William S. Miller, and many of the 
characteristic touches in each were suggested 
by the quaint apartments which Mr. Miller 
has made with his own hands in the cellar of 
his house in East Fortieth Street. His 
father, an old-time down-town liquor dealer, 
was famous in his day for the delightful 
beefsteak parties which he gave in a curious 
apartment in his place of business. The son, 
who is a builder and designer, traveled in 
Europe when a very young man, and was 
greatly charmed with the interior of many 
Dutch houses which he visited. After his 
father’s death he set himself to create in his 
own cellar a suite of small apartments that 
should resemble places of the kind that he had 
seen in Holland. It was his pleasure to do 
all the work on these apartments with his 
own hands, and his creation is singularly 
charming. It is an astonishment to those 
who do not know the place to descend the 
cellar stairs of an ordinary house in a New 
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