Restaurant design
included Picasso, Miro and Jackson Pollack. And the menu itself was almost comically large, with 20 or 25 hot appetisers, 25 cold appetisers and 25 variations on steak. As nearly everything changed seasonally the space itself was remarkably permanent. Highly geometric with long vistas and even longer walks from downstairs to the bar, from the bar to the pool room. It’s organised as a set of promenade spaces, each with its own character. The Grill Room (now the Bar) is warm and wooden and arrived at from the lower level. Rising up into the vast high room from the compressed travertine lined base below is an expansive act that emphasises the enormity of the space. Half lined with French walnut and half with full height glass walls, the warmth of the glass is helped with the swags of copper chain that line each panel and ripple in the slightest breeze. The hall connecting the Grill and Pool Rooms is nearly as grand as the rooms themselves – more museum than restaurant.
In New York financial wealth is all that matters. If one can pay the check at the Four Seasons one can dine at the Four Seasons The Pool Room is focused on a marble pool occupying the centre of the room and making it clear that there’s enough real estate to waste a bit for the purposes of privacy and, cleverly, making the central tables as sought after as the ones lining the windows. A similar trick is at work in the Grill Room, with the terraced levels making both proximity and distance from the centre of the room desirable for different reasons.
RESTAURANT AS THEATRE Presaging the 1980s trope about ‘restaurant as theatre’, the Four Seasons creates a number of theatrical sets in which the diner is always moving between stage and
Spring in the Four Seasons’ Pool Room looking over the park
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audience in an effortless and seamless procession. Even the connecting hall is several steps up from the lobby level to make it more runway than mere balcony. Lined in calfskin panels and more walnut, the Pool Room makes it clear finally that this is entire assemblage from the building to the seat at your table is an intensely masculine affair. The women’s bathroom is the perfect key to that, with a separate room for makeup and lined in pinkish marble, it seems remarkably out of place in the clubby space. The men’s room by contrast is lined in slabs of grey veined marble as crisp and tailored as a fine worsted wool suit. That The Four Seasons has not only lasted (it lost money for years) but thrived has as much to do with the democratisation of prestige as with the quality of the experience. In New York, money is the both the literal and social currency. In London, one can only advance so far without the right name and school diploma; in Los Angeles, celebrity is everything; in Washington, DC, political power is valued more highly than money; but in New York financial wealth is all that matters. It’s the great leveller, and if one can pay the check at the Four Seasons one can ultimately dine at the Four Seasons. No longer the most modern, or the largest, or the most expensive dining experience it is still the oldest and the first truly modern restaurant in New York, and likely in America. It set a standard of design as something to live up to, not just something to inhabit. It will remain intact beyond its current operator, its current name and its current clientele. It may very well outlive us all as a place, and it will always be The Four Seasons, just as the central tower in Rockefeller Center will always RCA Building, regardless of an NBC or GE or Comcast sign.
CLAD book 2017