(Unbelievable. I ate there with my family 11 years ago. - promoted by Jill Richardson)
At 4 0'clock in the morning on the first night of 2010, what was once America's highest-grossing restaurant shuttered its doors for the last time. Just three years ago, The Tavern on the Green was serving more than 700,000 meals a year and bringing in more than $38 million.
For anyone who has ever had the pleasure of enjoying the flamboyance of Warner LeRoy, the end of this landmark where John Lennon once celebrated his birthdays marked a very sad day.
And so there was a last waltz. With formidable revelry and not a few tears, some 1,700 New Year's Eve celebrators paid $125 to $500 a person for the privilege of welcoming 2010 with a last, vast, rollicking hurrah for the landmark restaurant in Central Park.
None will be as sad as the 400 Tavern employees.
I was not one of the 1,700 but I did walk around outside in the icy rain of New Years Eve with my camera and I'd like to share these photos of this last hurrah. |
| Few people are aware of the origins of The Tavern On the Green. It is just not the way a restaurateur would like a building to be known. The building that is an original design of Calvert Vaux in 1870 was originally the sheepfold that housed the sheep that grazed Sheep Meadow. Then when Robert Moses became New York City's Commissioner of Parks and probably the most controversial politician in New York history, he banished the sheep to Prospect Park in Brooklyn and after a 1934 renovation of the park building was no longer a barn for sheep. Instead it became a restaurant of little importance.
Looking closely you can see the signature of Calvert Vaux behind the topiary of Warner LeRoy. All the original park buildings have this same feel that Olmsted and Vaus thought complimented a park setting.
It was the grandson of Harry Warner, one of the founders of Warner Bros. Pictures who changed the Tavern on Green into what New Yorkers remember fondly. Warner LeRoy, who spent his formative years roaming the back lots of Warner Brothers, placed all of his showbiz talents into a $10 million two year renovation of the Central Park restaurant and in 1976 he captured a little of his "Wizard of Oz" roots.
Mr. LeRoy brought drama and entertainment to a business focused on cooking and hospitality. He envisioned restaurants as stage sets and threw everything into his designs, with the aim not merely of decorating but also of animating customers. The swinging singles of the 1960's came to life in Maxwell's Plum, the first and perhaps the most significant of Mr. LeRoy's dreamlands, which achieved a social significance in its era that rivaled that of the Stork Club of the 1940's and 50's.
Some said that his taste for rococo shimmer and dazzle was just noisy kitsch, that his pursuit of the fantastic sometimes crossed the line from exuberance to wretched excess. Others thought of him as an artist -- Paul Goldberger, writing in The New York Times, once called him ''New York's mad genius'' -- and, in fact, architecture and design writers seemed more interested than food critics in his restaurants. But no matter who was critiquing, his emphasis on production values transformed how restaurants looked and how people felt about them.
Just one of the many New York personalities that change everyone in some small way.
Mr. LeRoy's drama career never took off. In the late 60's, he was managing a theater at First Avenue and 64th Street when an adjacent corner coffee shop closed. He gave up the stage and began dreaming up Maxwell's.
Mr. LeRoy was a big man who in his earlier years as a man about town favored elaborate brocade jackets. As he grew older, he turned to a more subdued velvet. In photograph after photograph, he flung his arms wide open, a characteristic pose that seemed to declare both his possession of all you could see and his eagerness to share it with you.
He amassed not only a staggering collection of decorative art but also works by Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec, Louise Nevelson and Frank Stella. He was particularly attached to his collection of espresso cups and to a series of birds made of silverware. At his estate in Amagansett, N.Y., he kept a collection of rare trees.
Any New Yorker who has watched the passing horses;
From the Crystal Room;
Knows these small changes that make for great memories. Even a trip to the restroom was a trip.
Last night as I walked around remembering times I took tourist to eat at this now defunct landmark, times when I was flush and impressed a young lady with a Sunday brunch and Opening Night parties I attended there, I remembered that most of my memories are from the bar in the rafters, that part that really was a tavern;
It has been a long time since I could afford to sit inside but as I walked around looking in from the outside, I cherished those memories. Here are last night's photos of the Tavern on the Green.
Even though I was never a participant, I'd like to remember the place like this.
Tavern on the Green was frequented by prominent actors, musicians, politicians, and writers. Regular patrons have included former New York City Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, actresses Grace Kelly and Fay Wray and many others. Tavern on the Green has hosted the wedding receptions of several prominent Americans, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler and film director Walter Hill. John Lennon was a neighbor to Warner LeRoy and his son, Sean, was a playmate of Warner LeRoy's son, Max LeRoy. As a result, John and Sean celebrated numerous birthdays at Tavern on the Green during the late 1970s.
And I guess we can all get another chance to visit in movies like Scent of a Woman, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Ghost Busters, Hitch, Made, The Out-of-Towners and Wall Street.
But it is the end of an era and LeRoy's dream is going to be auctioned off.
The restaurant's vast assemblage of candelabras, samovars, weather vanes, sculptures, murals, prints, lighting fixtures, topiaries and other eccentric assets is to go on the auction block in a three-day sale at the restaurant by Guernsey's auction house, scheduled to begin Jan. 13.
And the workers have been left out in the cold by the new owner.
In August the city awarded a 20-year license starting in 2010 to a new Tavern operator, Dean J. Poll, who runs the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park. Mr. Poll has yet to sign a contract with Tavern's landlord, the Department of Parks and Recreation. His lawyer, Barry B. LePatner, said before New Year's that "we expect to finalize an agreement with the city shortly," but a key to that accord is a settlement with the powerful Hotel Trades Council, the union that represents some 400 Tavern employees. Negotiations are stalled.
But here is a little Tavern on the Green trivia. Wiki points to an old commercial;
A 1970s to 80s Folgers coffee advertising campaign capitalized on Tavern's reputation, among other locales, in variations of an ad featuring the line "...we've secretly replaced the fine coffee they usually serve with Folgers Crystals. ... Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!"
The New York City Marathon ended there. A playground just north of the restaurant was the first place where Robert Moses met his match when he wanted to turn it into additional parking for the Tavern on the Green. The drive up to the restaurant an extension of West 67th Street is called Warner LeRoy Place. That would explain why Robert Moses met his match. Don't ever mess with the Upper West Side. It is teeming with liberals.
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