The Death of Alfred Solomon at 104, a Man I Met

In 1988 and 1989, I waited tables at an exclusive club in Saratoga Springs, New York called The Reading Room. I was not a very good waiter because I am not a very good people person, but I managed to do it for two seasons. The club was only open one month (August) every year in conjunction with the Saratoga Horse Track. I remember once Al Pacino had dinner there.
The Restaurant was mainly a New York social lite gathering place for the hoity-toity. Out in the grass at a table with a umbrella, I had the privledge of waiting on Mr. Solomon, one of the kindest people I have ever met.
Every day he was there with a smile and his personal assistant Victoria.
I was his personal waiter for two years. One of my regrets in life, I'll be it a small regret, is the fact that Mr. Solomon could never find one of his hats to fit my head (I have a big skull). We stood out by his car one day as Victoria ripped bands out of hats that Mr. Solomon would hand her out of the trunk. Finally, Mr. Solomon shook his head and said, "Arnold, you've got one of the biggest heads I've seen." Oh well. I never got that hat he had promised me, but to be able to be in his presence all those years ago was better than any hat I would have lost by know anyways.
Here is his obituary in the New York Times. He died in Saratoga Springs at the age of 104 years old.


Alfred Solomon, 104, Innovator in the Sale of Hats, Dies
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: September 12, 2004
New York Times

Alfred Z. Solomon, who transformed the way American women buy fashionable hats and in later years became famous as the cigar-chomping dean of the Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga, N.Y., died on Sept. 4 in Saratoga. He was 104.
A party will be held as scheduled on his birthday in three weeks, with the orchestra, balloons and magicians that Mr. Solomon personally arranged.


Mr. Solomon was the founder of Madcaps, a company in the garment district of Manhattan that made "knockoffs" - slightly different versions - of hats by the great European designers and sold them to millions of American women at department store "hat bars," a concept he pioneered.

But it was as the good-humored occupant of Box E33 at the Saratoga track for 62 years that Mr. Solomon became a legend. Wearing one of his 50 straw hats, puffing on a cigar and perhaps sipping a bourbon, Mr. Solomon handicapped generations of ponies with mathematical precision and a highly personalized view of his results.

Victoria Garlanda, a friend, said he insisted that he won, but she said that all horse players probably think that. At any rate, he kept his bets small, leaving plenty for charitable giving.

His philanthropy included the National Museum of Racing's gift shop, which is named for him and his wife, Nancy, who died in 1982. He leaves no immediate survivors.

For the last six years, a race on opening day at Saratoga has been named for Mr. Solomon, whom The Associated Press described in 2000 as "a Damon Runyon throwback" in a high-society setting that has historically included Vanderbilts and Whitneys, not to mention Man o' War and Secretariat.

"I've been waiting 100 years for this," Mr. Solomon said when the race was named for him.

Alfred Zins Solomon was born in Manhattan on Sept. 25, 1899. His father, Felix, had several jobs, including selling lighting fixtures. One grandfather sold Green River whiskey, a rotgut concoction more than a few cuts below the Maker's Mark bourbon that Mr. Solomon came to prize. His other grandfather sold cigars.

In the late 1920's, Mr. Solomon began importing trimmings for hats. He bought marcasite stones, mainly in Czechoslovakia, that were used by Paris milliners at the time. He went to Paris to buy model hats to show to manufacturers in New York. The manufacturers ordered the trimmings and copied the hats, according to The New York Times in 1962.

His first venture in manufacturing was a little hand-crocheted hat, which he made in different versions over the years. The Parisian milliner Agnès helped him find the prototype.

Mr. Solomon's wife traveled with him to shows in Europe, and his sister, Janet A. Sloane, was long a partner in Madcaps. The company did not have shows; people could simply wander into the shop on 39th Street to see versions of hats by such designers as Chanel, a good friend of Mr. Solomon's.

Mr. Solomon explained to The Times in 1958 that there were only two kinds of hats in 1932, "Better," usually on a department store's fifth floor with French clothes, and "Budget," on the third floor. Mr. Solomon led the fight to get hat bars onto the main floor, where other accessories were usually sold.

"Nothing should be hidden," Mr. Solomon said. "All the models should be spread out on the counter so that a woman can grab and try on a dozen of them in a minute, if she wants."

Not only did Mr. Solomon offer a greater variety of stylish hats with greater convenience - albeit at higher prices - but he added his considerable personal panache to the brew. Ads for stores like Bloomingdale's and Bonwit Teller in the 50's and 60's regularly announced visits by Mr. Madcaps.

Not long after his marriage in 1937, Mr. Solomon bought a 286-acre estate that he named Madcaps Farm. His routine was to spend weekends on the farm, which was conveniently near the Saratoga track. He would then return to Manhattan on Monday to put in a few hours of work before heading to the races at Belmont, in Queens. A stop or two at an O.T.B. parlor was not unheard of.

Mr. Solomon came to be known as the Duke of Gansevoort, in honor of the town nearest the farm. In recent years, he sold his apartment on Sutton Place in Manhattan to live at the farm full time. He himself never raised thoroughbreds. He gave up on Chesapeake Bay retrievers after a litter of 14