New Bar at the Former Four Seasons Profiled in The New York Times

In the Food section of its March 27 edition, The New York Times provided a sneak peak into the new bar at the former Four Seasons restaurant at the Seagram Building, which is set to open this spring.

Since its opening in 1959, the original Four Seasons restaurant became a central node in the New York dining scene, with its remarkable interiors designed by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe adding a layer of awe to the entire culinary experience. After shutting its doors last year and auctioning off its entire contents, including many pieces of original Knoll furniture, the owners of the original restaurant will move their establishment to a new location.

Meanwhile, the physical space in the Seagram Building, with some of its defining characteristics still intact, will reopen as The Grill and The Pool, two distinct restaurants that map onto the two separate rooms within the restaurant.

The new proprietors, keen to retain the original glamour of the famed dining establishment, have preserved Richard Lippold's brass sculpture above the bar and reissued a set of Four Seasons Barstools from Knoll, with dandridge horsehair seats and bronze finishes, that were also originally designed by Johnson and Mies van der Rohe. 

Similarly, Eero Saarinen's sculptural Side Tables and Tulip Stools will flank the lounge seating around the room, specified in dark materials that match the rich timbre of the space. The restaurant will also include reissued, bronze-finished versions of Mies van der Rohe's Brno Chair, upholstered in blue mohair for the dining room and dark brown Lucerne Spinneybeck leather for the bar area.

Custom bronze-topped Saarinen Side Tables designed for The Four Seasons Restaurant. Image courtesy of Wright.

Housed in Mies van der Rohe's glass-and-steel tower, considered by many the apotheosis of the International Style, the new restaurant and bar will inevitably allude to their modernist setting by way of interior decoration. Much of it will be echo the original selections made by the architect, who asked Philip Johnson to assist with the project.

Of working with Mies, Philip Johnson said, “No other important contemporary architect cares so much about placing furniture.” Johnson understood the full extent to which the restaurant formed an integral part of Mies' overall building design.

Four Seasons Barstools surround The Front Bar at The Four Seasons Restaurant. Photograph by Jennifer Calais Smith.

"The thing about [Mies'] work is that it’s not a building—it’s an environment," Phyllis Lambert, who commissioned Mies to design the building, told Nuovo magazine in 2007. "No one understood as well as he did that it’s about public and private space.”