The Four Seasons Restaurant

The Four Seasons

52nd Street entrance to the Four Seasons Restaurant
Restaurant information
Established 1959
Current owner(s) The Bronfman family, Alex von Bidder, and Julian Niccolini
Food type New American cuisine
Street address 99 East 52nd Street, Midtown Manhattan
City New York City
State New York
For the hotel chain, see Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts.

The Four Seasons was a New American cuisine restaurant in New York City located at 99 East 52nd Street, in the Seagram Building in Midtown Manhattan.[1] The restaurant is owned by the Bronfman family, Alex von Bidder, and Julian Niccolini.[2]

Opened in 1959, the Four Seasons is associated with a number of milestone firsts in the hospitality industry. The Four Seasons is credited with introducing the idea of seasonally-changing menus to America. It was the first destination restaurant to print its menus in English.[3] The Four Seasons was also the first restaurant in the US to cook using fresh, wild mushrooms.[4] In June 2015, Aby Rosen, owner of the Seagram Building, announced that the restaurant's lease would not be extended.[5] A new location at 280 Park Avenue was selected and a lease was signed. The Seagram Building location closed after dinner service on July 16, 2016, and the Four Seasons will move to Park Avenue.[6]

Awards and honors

The restaurant itself has been widely praised, winning the James Beard Award in 1999. The restaurant is known as much for its clientele as its food, with its Midtown location making it convenient for power lunches.

Design

The Four Seasons was designated an interior landmark.[7]

The restaurant's interior, which was designed by the building's architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, has remained almost unchanged since construction in 1959. The restaurant was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as an interior landmark in 1989.[8]

Over a hundred items of serviceware were designed by L. Garth Huxtable and Ada Louise Huxtable, everything from champagne glasses to bread trays.[9] Today they and all of the Four Seasons Restaurant's furniture are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

For the celebration of the restaurant's 50th anniversary, The Four Seasons hired Manhattan Architect Belmont Freeman FAIA for a full restoration of the ladies' lounge.

In July 2016, the furnishings of the restaurant ("virtually all its contents") were sold at auction in New York.[10]

In 2009, The Four Seasons was the subject of a mockumentary and a children's book published in August 2009.[11][12]

Art

The artist Mark Rothko was engaged to paint a series of works for the restaurant in 1958. Accepting the commission, he secretly resolved to create "something that will ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room." Observing the restaurant's pretentious atmosphere upon his return from a trip to Europe, Rothko abandoned the project altogether, returned his advance and kept the paintings for himself. The final series was dispersed and now hangs in three locations: London’s Tate Gallery, Japan’s Kawamura Memorial Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.[13] During the period in which Rothko worked on his murals, the Four Seasons rented Jackson Pollock's masterpiece Blue Poles from its then-owner, art collector Ben Heller.[14][15] John Logan's Tony Award-winning 2010 play Red dramatizes Rothko's time working on the Seagram Murals.

From 1975 until 1985 four paintings by Ronnie Landfield from the collection of Philip Johnson [16] were installed on the wall that had been initially planned for the Mark Rothko commission.[17][18] In 1985 the artist James Rosenquist was commissioned to install a permanent mural on the wall; the Landfield paintings were returned to Philip Johnson. A major Richard Lippold sculpture is installed in the Front Bar, which hangs from the ceiling.

The large curtain designed by Pablo Picasso for the Ballets Russes ballet Le Tricorne (1919) has been hung between the Grill Room and the Pool Room since the restaurant opened.[14] The curtain is a portion of a Picasso tapestry used as a prop for the ballet that was purchased in 1957 by Phyllis Lambert, the daughter of the founder of Seagram, and installed in the entryway to the restaurant for its opening in 1959. In 2014, the curtain was removed permanently from that location, and is currently in the New-York Historical Society.[19] Controversy over the plans to remove the curtain existed and the Museum of Modern Art offered storage space for it if the outcome is removal.

In addition to the works on permanent public display there were other works and continuously revolving exhibitions in the dining rooms and the 52nd Street entrance walls which have included works by Joan Miró, paintings by Frank Stella, Ronnie Landfield, Robert Indiana, and Richard Anuszkiewicz, amongst several others.[20]

References

  1. ↑ "Four Seasons Restaurant | Manhattan | Restaurant Menus and Reviews". Zagat. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Four Seasons in talks with 280 Park Avenue About Move". NY Post. April 20, 2015. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
  3. ↑ "Exploring the Four Seasons". Four Seasons Restaurant. Retrieved October 12, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Restaurant Row: The Four Seasons". nytimes.com. March 17, 1995. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  5. ↑ Maak, Niklas (14 June 2015). "Rettet die Zukunft! Oder fahrt noch mal hin". Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (in German). p. 69.
  6. ↑ Four Seasons Is Headed For New Space
  7. ↑ https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-why-some-of-new-york-s-most-significant-historic-interiors-are-in-danger
  8. ↑ "Four Seasons". Restaurant Row. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  9. ↑ "The Four Seasons Restaurant". The Four Seasons Restaurant. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  10. ↑ "Four Seasons décor under the hammer". Howtospendit.ft.com. Retrieved July 18, 2016.
  11. ↑ Maurer, Daniel (June 18, 2009). "Four Seasons Owner Breaks 'No Dogs' Rule for Kids' Book". NYMag.com.
  12. ↑ http://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780763640149/
  13. ↑ How Rothko's Seagram murals found their way to London, the Guardian retrieved online September 10, 2009
  14. 1 2 "The Most Expensive Restaurant Ever Built, Reprinted from Evergreen No. 10, 1959". Evergreenreview.com. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  15. ↑ art on air Retrieved June 29, 2010
  16. ↑  . "Exhibition Review". Antiquesandthearts.com. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  17. ↑ "Tate Modern, Rothko Murals". Tate.org.uk. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  18. ↑ "Biography". Abstract-art.com. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  19. ↑ Segal, David, At Four Seasons, Picasso Tapestry Hangs on the Edge of Eviction, The New York Times, February 4, 2014, page A1 and on the internet,
  20. ↑ "Huffington Post, James Welling, Glass House Photographs exhibition". Huffingtonpost.com. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
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Coordinates: 40°45′29″N 73°58′19.5″W / 40.75806°N 73.972083°W / 40.75806; -73.972083

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