This is Nate Domeo from the Memory Palace podcast. I'm currently the artist and residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

Which has been producing 10 stories inspired by the Met's collection and by the museum itself

This episode is intended to be heard while in gallery 719 the Tannenbaum gallery also known as the Alexandria Ballroom

This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate Domeo

People used to dance in this room

Back when this room used to be in a different room all the blue would work the fireplaces and that balcony that hangs over the floor

Used to be a ballroom on the second floor of a hotel called Gadsby's Tavern in Alexandria, Virginia

starting in 1791

The building is still there, but the ballroom is here at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as it has been since

1924 when they first opened the American way

American art hadn't gotten a lot of respect up to that point even here in America in American decorative arts got even less

So to make a big deal out of it and to bring in the grand ballroom of Gadsby's Tavern to be a backdrop

Essentially for a collection of American furniture was a big deal bit

And this room was a big draw for people who were into things like John Townsend Chests and drop leaf tables

Inside chairs from Samuel Dunlap or Wallace Nudding or End Irons from Reveurant Sons

And that covered a lot of people I'm told for a while there

But I bet they're not here right now

I bet and I could be wrong I could lose this bet

I bet you are nearly all alone in this room

And some of it is because this room is off the beaten path as it has been since they rearranged the American wing a while back

And some of it is because people don't really care much anymore about towns and Chests and drop leaf tables

Side chairs by Nudding and that other guy whose name I've already forgotten

...