In design, August is two restaurants in one, with a windowless rear dining room, encircled by a second-floor gallery, which feels like an expensive private library.
The earliest attendees took seats beneath the monument's dome in the main hall, a huge room encircled by friezes made from Italian marble that depict the epic migration.
In a room encircled by leather-bound books, Paul Dodyk, a retired partner at the law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore, welcomed the group.
The Birders Inn, where I spent one Christmas Eve, offers clean, unremarkable rooms encircling a pretty garden.
The main entry and a guest apartment are housed within these legs; the rest of the house is located above, where a series of rooms encircle a courtyard pool.
The décor at the Dark Horse includes Art Deco posters on the butter-yellow walls, an industrial-looking black ceiling with heat ducts and pipes, wraparound windows, silvery chairs, a room-encircling black banquette and wood tables with paper placemats and cloth napkins.
Along with the main building, the 19 detached rooms encircle a large swath of grass that by day provides a back-to-basics luxury, with swings, a tepee and lawn chairs; by night, revelers at the restaurant, bars and nightclub spill out onto the lawn, especially around the picnic tables, with their adorable umbrellas and heat lamps.
It is a superb cathedral of eccentricity, with a gorgeous dining hall the size of a football field, a gasp-inducing canyon of a lobby area, with corridors and rooms encircling an exquisitely ornate galleried central space which is to be the location of an extraordinary gunfight.
Meeting rooms encircle the pool patio and are bedecked with local art pieces.
A swarm of Chinese media falls into the room and encircles me in a feeding frenzy, the opinions of a no-mark western journalist now apparently gold dust by virtue of proximity to the chairman.
