Café des Artistes

Café des Artistes' front entrance.

Café des Artistes was a fine restaurant at One West 67th Street in Manhattan and was owned by George Lang. He closed the restaurant for vacation at the beginning of August 2009 and, while away, decided to keep it closed permanently. He announced the closure on August 28, 2009.[1] His wife, Jenifer Lang, had been the managing director of the restaurant since 1990.[2]

History

The restaurant first opened in 1917.[3] Late in 1985, there was a fire in the kitchen, but the restaurant was able to reopen.[4]

Café des Artistes was designed for the residents of the Hotel des Artistes, since the apartments lacked kitchens. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Norman Rockwell, Isadora Duncan and Rudolph Valentino were patrons.[5] It was a popular spot for many celebrities because of its privately secluded yet hip atmosphere.

In early September 2009, two years into the Great Recession, Lang announced that the café was closing; shortly thereafter, Lang filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, claiming debts of nearly $500,000, some of which was owed to a union benefit trust.[6] At the time, he also faced a lawsuit from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Welfare Fund.[6]

In 2011, a new restaurant, The Leopard at des Artistes, opened in the location. Like its forerunner, it caters to the upper echelon of New York society.[7]

The Murals

The restaurant's famous murals, retained in the new restaurant's 2011 renovation,[7] were painted by Howard Chandler Christy, famous American artist who also painted Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States that hangs in the US Capitol. Christy was a tenant of the building, Hotel des Artistes, until his death in 1952.[8][5] There are six panels of wood nymphs - the first of which were completed in 1934. Other Christy works on display include paintings such as The Parrot Girl, The Swing Girl, Ponce De Leon, Fall, Spring, and the Fountain of Youth.[3]

Now, although the lovely nymphs still flit and dance, when one looks around the restaurant, one sees strategically placed mirrors where there used to be unbroken mural. The explanation has to do with real property landlord-tenant law.

In the 1960s, a dispute arose between the outgoing tenant and the landlord over who had rights in and to the murals. Under the common law, assuming the parties had not agreed otherwise, fixtures, i.e., accessions that had inured to the realty so that their removal would cause material harm to the freehold, would become property of the landlord upon the termination of the lease.

The parties settled the dispute, each presumably unwilling to run the risk of receiving nothing because of an adverse judgment; however, in all likelihood, the murals were not fixtures, and were the property of the tenant. In any case, per the settlement terms, the tenant was allowed to take and keep several of the murals, but the majority of the murals remained in the restaurant, and the landlord replaced with mirrors those sections that the tenant took.

In Popular Culture

The restaurant was featured as a location in the 1993 Woody Allen film Manhattan Murder Mystery.[9]

The restaurant was mentioned in The CW television show, Gossip Girl. [10]

Monica Geller worked there in television show Friends.

Jack Donaghy asks Liz Lemon to meet his friend, Gretchen Thomas, at the Café des Artistes in the television show 30 Rock. [11]

It is the setting for the film My Dinner with Andre.

References

  1. ↑ "Café des Artistes closing"
  2. ↑ http://www.212dressingroom.com/blog_more.php?id=5032
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Café des Artistes history
  4. ↑ December 18, 1985 NEW YORK DAY BY DAY Cafe des Artistes Making a Comeback
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 New York Deco, page 127, Richard Berenholtz, Carol Willis, Maren Elizabeth Gregerson (captions), Welcome Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59962-078-7.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Wells, Pete (September 9, 2009). "Aftermath". NYTimes.com.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Sifton, Sam (2 August 2011). "The Leopard at des Artistes". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 August 2011.
  8. ↑ Howard Chandler Christy papers, 1873-2001. Lafayette College Special Collections & College Archives, http://academicmuseum.lafayette.edu/special/Christy/Christyonline/bio.html
  9. ↑ "Manhattan Murder Mystery". sonymoviechannel.com. Sony/CPE US Networks. Retrieved 2015-01-12. Principal photography began in September 1992 and trailed the novice detectives through a variety of venues in and around New York, including: the Hotel 17 on the East Side, the famed "21" Club, the Café des Artistes des Artistes for a poker lesson, Elaine's, Madison Square Garden for a New York Rangers hockey game, Lincoln Center and a night-time visit to a steel smelting factory.
  10. ↑ "Gossip Girl".
  11. ↑ (S01E03, "The Blind Date").

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Café des Artistes.

Coordinates: 40°46′24″N 73°58′43.9″W / 40.77333°N 73.978861°W