Irvine Chase
by James Crotty
September 15, 1996
THE DOLL HOSPITAL
New York City,
NY
t may go without saying that Irving Chase's New York
Doll Hospital is one of a kind. Actually, it's something of a miracle that
one even exists. The place is pretty much what its name suggests: a
hospital,
for dolls. Sick, broken, headless, limbless--dolls of all shapes and sizes,
with all conceivable maladies. It doesn't look like a hospital, though;
what it looks like is a mess. A mess of doll limbs and heads and
eyeballs,
box after box of them, stacked along two rooms' worth of walls,
nearly
to the ceiling. The hospital is a family operation, founded by Irving
Chase's
grandparents in 1900, taken over by his parents, and then, in 1946, by
Irving himself. It has had three homes over the years but the mission
has
remained unchanged: The New York Doll Hospital repairs and
restores, buys
and sells dolls. "We've never lost a patient," Chase says,
"and
we don't bury our mistakes. One hundred percent success. How do
you like
that?"
INTERVIEW
Jim Monk: Who are some of your bigger-named, well-known
clients?
Irving Chase: We've had at least several hundred
well-known,
very important VIPs. For me to start going through them would be
impossible.
Anybody that's anybody comes to the New York Doll Hospital,
because we
are it. You go from Florida to Maine, I don't think you'll find
two.
Jim Monk: People must be very happy when they get their
dolls back.
Irving Chase: Nobody grows up. We've had
seventy-year-old
men coming in here with their little monkeys and little teddy bears.
"I
love him. He's been my buddy. I sleep with him." As a matter of
fact,
a young lady came in a couple of weeks ago. She was stunning,
beautiful.
And she brought her little monkey, and the head had come off. She
wanted
the head put back on again. I said, "All right, I'll have it for you
in a couple days." She says, "No, I have to have it now,
because
I sleep with him." So I said, "What a lucky monkey this
is."
Jim Monk: Do you have dolls of your own that you play
with?
Irving Chase: I'm not crazy about dolls. I like to work
with them, I enjoy them, I appreciate them, I can understand them, we
talk
to each other and have very lengthy conversations, but I don't love
dolls.
Jim Monk: Do any of your dolls talk back to
you?
Irving Chase: Of course, all the time.
Jim Monk:
What do they say?
Irving Chase: They speak mostly in
German.
Jim Monk: What do they say in
German?
Irving Chase: They say, "Ich liebe dich. Ich will
spazieren gehen." They want to take a walk with
me.
Michael Monk: Is Barbie banned from this
shop?
Irving Chase: No, I've got Barbies. If a serious doll
collector comes in looking for Barbies, I've got them.
Michael
Monk: Who are your favorite dolls?
Irving Chase: My wife and
my two daughters....
Jim Monk: I love it...
Irving Chase:
And my three girlfriends...
Jim Monk: Yeah, you've gotta have
three.
