This memoir tells the story of a little boy growing up in a world of privileged comfort in a Damon Runyan neighbourhood during the Depression. A Manhattan fixture for 50 years, the Taft was the largest hotel in midtown, boasting (somewhat inaccurately) '2000 Rooms with Bath'. In 1931, when Stephen Lewis was a toddler, his father became the manager of the Taft Hotel, which he ran for 33 successful years. Steve and his little brother grew up in a four-room suite overlooking the Roxy Theater. His grade school classmates were awed by the free lunch that Steve's mother served every day in the Lewis's 15th floor suite and were later impressed with the limitless supply of ice cream available to the Lewis boys. While the other kids from school grew up in Hell's Kitchen, Steve learned how to use a swizzle stick, brought girls home to dance in the ballroom at lunchtime, and lived the high life at the beautiful Taft Hotel. His recollections, filled with vivid and rich detail, are of a New York that most people know only in their dreams.