American Holiday - 5
Markus Lindner couldn’t wait to show off a couple, or more, elephants. Boston’s currently showing The Great Elephant Migration, a herd of 100 life-size Asian-elephant sculptures stretching a mile along Commonwealth Avenue Mall, Arlington Street to Fairfield Street. Thousands flock to watch, and admire the sculptures made in India from an invasive plant, Lantana camara. Elephants have previously ‘paraded’ in other key US spots as well as London and India and some bystanders, wherever, are so enamoured they buy – in Boston they’ll happily house their tusker sculpture back in Beacon Hill, thus benefitting the New England Aquarium and Boston Public Art Triennial. This is all done via the nonprofit Elephant Family USA, and prices range from approximately $8,000 to $22,000. Ruth Ganesh is helpedi n this initiative by conservation researcher Dr Tarsh Thekaekara and Shubhra Nayer, who rejoices in the rather rare title of ‘chief elephant designer’.
Lindner is GM of Mandarin Oriental Boston, the hotel for Big Business – and events. During 2026, Boston has had the tall ships, and it's had the World Cup. Much to everyone's surprise other than Boston’s single malt community and others in the know, the Scottish were the most welcome of the fan guests. They took over the town, and the centre of Boston became very much an enclave of kilts and the like.
Bedrooms, Champalimaud design, are subtle - pale-coloured, but with hints of city. Suite 611, for instance, has pale green walls, but the carpet is indictative of the tall business buildings around, grey with black and white stripes on it. There's a big marble bathroom, which you skirt around to get to single-head shower and the Toto toilet. A well-chosen selection of books included a Slim Aarons photo collection, a reminder of beautiful people of a short time ago. Actually, few other shutter-snappers have attained such recent celebrity status as George Allen Aarons (1916-2006): the 6foot 4-er picked up his nickname when working as a war photographer. The current reported auction record for a Slim Aarons photo, Christie’s 2024, is $63,000, for a large, numbered edition of his Poolside Glamour – since Girlahead allows herself to ramble occasionally, for which many apologies, it is is interesting to note that the current record for a print by Aarons’ contemporary, Mid West landscape photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984) is $988,000,. For a mural-sized gelatin-silver print of The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (1942), Sotheby’s 2020.
Back to business. Having Gordon Ramsay doing Ramsay’s Kitchen here was a brilliant idea of the hotel’s owners, Mandarin Oriental International, who bought it in 2016. As well as the 148 hotel rooms, there are also 40 condos and 35 apartments. The gym, shared between them and a very select number of outside members, is latest Technogym and well thought out, with two reformers, and regular weekend classes are held in an event space – in summer, they move to the garden at the rear.
Yes, this is Boston base for top people. They want a choice of wise or wicked at breakfast, below. Berries or pain au chocolat. If they want real, old-fashioned news, The New York Times, the real paper, is delivered when they want it. Doing business in Boston, this is it. Coming here for education, you're going to be cleverly welcomed. At the beginning of the school year, the hotel knows that pleasing new parents bringing kids to school could lead to lifetime loyalists. Towards the end of August, indeed, even the GM's office was once again full of packages, bicycles, beds even, that are every year delivered here to be sent on to freshmen at Harvard or one of the other local educational establishments. No wonder Markus Lindner had momentarily to escape, to the elephants.
