A writer of 18 books, this donor was known for his cooking, photography, and his work as a home furnishings designer.
Lloyd Lee Bailey (1926-2003)
Lee Bailey was a food and lifestyle maven, an expert in the “stylish life.” He maintained that a meal’s setting was as important as the food, and the way it was presented mattered.
Lee’s goal was to demystify cooking and entertaining. “The point of entertaining is to have a good time,” he wrote. He favored easy-to-make recipes and practical touches, like casually sticking bunches of wildflowers in a pitcher to decorate the table or packing ripe peaches for a picnic by surrounding them with peanuts in their shells—literally packing peanuts—and snacking on them after lunch.
Lee was known for his writing, cooking, photography, and his work as a home furnishings designer. He published 18 books, from Lee Bailey’s Country Weekends in 1983, which was praised for its photos of rural and beachside scenes, to Lee Bailey’s The Way I Cook in 1996, featuring more than 90 of his favorite Southern recipes.
Lloyd Lee Bailey was born November 15, 1926, in Bunkie, Louisiana, the only child of Lloyd Lemuel Bailey and Ada Joyce White. After a stint in the Army from 1945 to 1946, he studied at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, graduating in 1950. He taught for six years at Tulane University in New Orleans before returning to New York to teach at Parsons.
In addition to writing books, Lee was a columnist and contributor to Food and Wine, Gourmet, Vogue, and House and Garden magazines, as well as The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.
From 1974 to 1987, he owned a food and housewares shop he opened within the Henri Bendel store and then moved to Saks Fifth Avenue. He also owned a separate design business in New York City and operated a kitchen gadgets and accessories boutique in Southampton. At his summer home in Bridgehampton, he entertained lavishly, hosting dinner parties for A-listers such as the writer Nora Ephron, actress Elaine Stritch, society columnist Liz Smith, and Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown
His own luxurious lifestyle included a penthouse in Chelsea with fruit trees and flowers on the terrace overlooking the Hudson River and Statue of Liberty.
After a series of strokes left him partially paralyzed in the 1990s, Lee taught his caregiver and friend, Tom Booth, to cook. He continued to “throw a dinner party for about eight people once every three weeks, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., sharp,” Booth said. Lee died in his apartment on October 16, 2003. He was 76.
Lee Bailey established a fund in The New York Community Trust to support educational and related programs for disadvantaged young children and infants.