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If not the best architect in New York, jovial Joseph Urban is certainly the most spectacular. A great vat-shaped Viennese, 60 years old, weighing 230 Ih. according to his secretary's latest estimate, his first triumphs were the Khedive's Palace in Cairo; the Alexander Bridge over the Neva in Leningrad; the castle of Prince Esterhazy de Galantha in Hungary. In 1912 he brought a corps of Austrian scene painters to the U. S. to design scenery for the Boston Opera House. Its failure threw him on the mercy of Florenz Ziegfeld. Since then he has done about one-third of the scenery for the Metropolitan Opera, all scenery for Ziegfeld. He gradually crept back into architecture. In recent years he has designed the Ziegfeld Theatre, Palm Beach palazzi for Edward Hyatt Hutton, Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr., a Gingerbread Castle for Wheatsworth Cracker Co. and the New York School for Social Research, his most successful building to date. Between times he keeps up with his stage work, designs furniture, lace curtains, trunks for Hartman, an automobile for the New Era Motors, and dress fabrics. A convivial soul,'he can work 16 hours a day and still find time for champagne suppers, Viennese songs, beautiful women. His wife is a New York Beegle. He keeps eight shepherd dogs in the country, and gives two Christmas parties a year complete with tinseled trees, lebkuchen and. champagne, one for his architects' office, one for his scenic studio. Soviet fathers have not forgotten his design for the Neva bridge, and Joseph Urban was one of the eight foreign architects invited to submit designs for the preat Palace of the Soviets in Moscow. The red plaster model of his project was the focal point of last week's exhibition. It embraced a huge segment-shaped auditorium to seat 25,000 people and allow whole regiments to march across its stage, offices, libraries, and a combined auditorium and theatre to serve the All Union Congress.
* Dedicating their cellars, their kidneys to the cause, 16 architects went to a cocktail party at Mr. Urban's studio. Each guest was expected to pay $2, and promise to give another cocktail party in his home or office and invite twelve paying guests. Each of the twelve must invite eight, each of the eight, four—by which time 7,921 people will have contributed $15,842 to benefit the 1,700 draughtsmen, drunk approximately 31,-684 cocktails to the benefit of 1,536 bootleggers, eaten approximately 180 Ibs. of caviar to the benefit of the Union of Socialist Soviet Repub-lics.