NEW YORK — Sometimes glass ceilings can be a good thing. Take, for instance, the party Valentino threw at the new Gramercy Park Hotel Private Roof Club Monday night just as a nor'easter storm was making its way out of the city. Guests including Andrea Casiraghi, Tatiana Santo Domingo, Samantha Boardman Rosen, Lauren Davis, Josh Lucas, Amy Sacco and Jacquetta Wheeler thanked their lucky stars for the terrace's retractable transparent enclosure. "I wish they would open the roof just for a moment to feel the breeze, though," said Eva Lorenzotti, "and then close it up again." The party was thrown for no other reason than to ring in spring and give Valentino the distinction of being the Neil Armstrong of the Roof Club — the first one to have a party there.

In Midtown, the Baryshnikov Arts Center filled up with art-world buffs as the Humane Society of New York held its annual Fine Arts Photography Auction, which runs through the weekend. A Marlene Dietrich picture went for $11,000, a Steven Klein photo of a horse's behind fetched more than $2,000 and there were enough celebrity portraits to fill a year's worth of glossy magazines. Cornelia Guest played hostess, which was more than fitting. "I have 11 dogs," she said (as well as a donkey). "And I just adopted a Labrador from the Humane Society."

On Tuesday night, Hugo Boss and the Cinema Society hosted a screening of "Fracture," the new thriller starring Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. And while Hopkins was a no-show at the Tribeca Grand because of the weather, an entire Gosling clan came out, as Ryan brought along his mom, Donna, and sis, Mandi. "It's nice to see him in a suit for once," smiled his mother as her son, sans Rachel McAdams, gamely braved the flashbulbs.

After the screening, guests such as Edie Falco, Marisa Berenson, Tiffany Dubin, Olivia Wilde, Malin Akerman and Sean Penn partied at — where else? — the Gramercy Park Hotel's Private Roof Club.