Meet the Designer: An Afternoon with Albert Hadley (Part 1 of 3)

It's not everyday that we get the chance to spend an afternoon with an interior design icon and legend such as Albert Hadley, but last week that's just what we did. We gave Albert our full attention as he took us through the time line of his illustrious career and shed light on how he got to where he is now.

“I started my career working in Nashville. I was lucky to start out working with a furniture store that my family had known; it was my first experience of selling and I was pretending to be a decorator! I was clearly very young!" Albert said. "When I graduated from school, I was fortunate enough to then work for one of the top decorators in the South, Herbert Rogers, who was based in Nashville, Tennessee. He was the big guy there, so I had a wonderful year or so before I left for the military. I went into the service in Europe, and of course I was interested in seeing as much as I could when I wasn't working. I was stationed in London, so I was able to see some exciting things there.

"When I came back, it wasn't long before I had decided that I intensely wanted to be in New York City—it was where  the design work that I had been following was. In those days, as it still is a bit today, interior design was seen through publications so I knew of every important person working!" Albert admitted, laughing about the ambitious youngster he had been. "It's still a mystery how I was able to be so outgoing and outspoken amongst such icons of design, but I made it my point to meet them all! I explained that I wasn't looking for a job and that I just simply wanted to meet them. Strangely enough, all without exception were open to meeting me. I started with the top ones of the time like Rose Cummings and Billy Baldwin—you know, the big firms."

Albert's meetings with the New York-based players of design were only the beginning of his illustrious path to becoming one of them. Upon meeting Mrs. Archibald Brown of McMillen, Inc. (previously Mrs. McMillen) Albert was faced with her assertion that he was certainly looking for a job. Mrs. Miller notified Albert that she wouldn't hire anybody unless they had been to Parson's The New School for Design, because she was on the board and a good friend of the school's.

"So I applied for the six-week summer course at Parson's, and I got in. Shortly thereafter I was awarded a scholarship so I stayed for the full course.  In three year's time, after I graduated, I was then offered a position there to teach," said Albert. "I then taught there for five years and from there I went off on my own and started my own business in New York City. I was fortunate enough to have more than decent clients and did reasonably well!

"I had my own business and studio apartment on East 57th street for a few years before being offered a job with McMillan Inc., one of the most prestigious decorating firms at the time. I accepted and went down as the only male decorator on the staff. Mrs. Brown and a group of lady decorators and I got along with them very well! I accomplished quite a lot and they were very helpful and supportive.

"The director of Parson's School of Design, a great friend of Mrs. Brown’s, telephoned me one morning with an opportunity. He said that he had sat next to Mrs. Henry Parish the night before and did I know her? I said that I had met her a few times before and he told me that she was more or less just finished with her work at the White House and she was hoping to find somebody to go into business with and she was waiting for me to call! We met two or three times and I was hired to start on the first of the following year, four months later."

Albert worked with Mrs. Henry Parish II until he was made partner in 1962. Parish-Hadley went on for the rest of Mrs. Parish's life.  A short time later, at the turn of the century, Albert closed Parish-Hadley and opened his business under his own name, which closed only this past year.

Stay tuned to GoDesignGo for more with Albert Hadley and his path through the interior design world to today.