Campbell Apartment

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The Campbell Apartment is a public bar and cocktail lounge located in a corner of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Contrary to its name, the space was never an apartment, but was once the office of American financier and railroad tycoon John W. Campbell.

1 History as an office
2 Present-day use
3 External links
4 References

[edit] History as an office

Front to the street.

The 3,500 square-foot space was first leased by John Campbell from Cornelius Vanderbilt, owner of Grand Central, in 1923. It was a single room 60 feet long by 30 feet wide with a 25-foot ceiling and an enormous fireplace in which Campbell kept a steel safe. He commissioned Augustus N. Allen, an architect known for designing estates on Long Island, to build an office, transforming the space into a 13th-century Florentine palace with a hand-painted timbered ceiling and leaded windows.

One of the most striking features was a Persian carpet that took up the entire floor and was said to have cost $300,000 at the time, or roughly $3.5 million today. Campbell added a piano and pipe organ, and at night turned his office into a reception hall, entertaining 50 or 60 friends who came to hear famous musicians play private recitals.

After Campbell’s death in 1957, the rug and other furnishings disappeared from his office and the space eventually became a signalman’s office and later a closet at Grand Central, where the transit police stored guns and other equipment. It also became a small jail, in the area of the present-day bar.

[edit] Present-day use

Interior entrance.

After falling into disrepair, the space was restored and renovated in 1999 as the Campbell Apartment. The name is apparently a misnomer, people having assumed that such a grand space was an apartment, not an office. The walls and ceiling were brought back to their former glory and the original steel safe, once hidden behind a wall, now sits in the massive fireplace as a reminder of Campbell's wealth. The renovation cost $1.5 million.

In 2006, Mark Grossich, who restored the leased space and owns the bar, decided the Campbell Apartment needed further updating. He hired Nina Campbell, an interior designer in London, to spruce it up. She replaced a largely blue palette with a largely red one, including new carpet, bar stools and chairs. To avoid closing for even one night, on March 4, 2007, the renovation took place in less than 12 hours and cost $350,000.