New York Central New York, New York
As part of the renovation of the Grand Hyatt Hotel’s vast multilevel lobby, the architects were commissioned to create an essentially new restaurant opening off of it, with a bold identity of its own. A new name, New York Central, alluded both to its pivotal location — between Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building — and to the once powerful railroad company that built the station and initiated the neighborhood’s prosperity. When the 1920s Commodore Hotel was remodeled in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt, the city had permitted a second-floor, glass-enclosed projection over the 42 nd Street sidewalk, from which patrons could see literally from river to river across the midsection of Manhattan. While the view out from this space was intriguing, one objective of the restaurant redesign was to attract the attention of the throngs below to this hovering tube — encouraging them to find their way up into it. The route to the restaurant, through the hotel lobby, had never been obvious, and the redesign eased it in two ways. Post-1980 renovations that had isolated the restaurant from the lobby were removed, restoring the earlier visual continuity. And a new elevator was installed, providing a universally accessible alternative to the elegant but rather roundabout stairs up from both street level and the elevated lobby floor. A key design challenge was to provide design unity for this long narrow restaurant space, which had to be divided along its length into functional zones — a bar, related casual seating, and more formal dining at tables. The multipurpose solution was a suspended sculpture, some 100 feet long, of polished stainless steel lighting tubes. This architect-designed installation is striking enough to assert the restaurant’s identity over its entire length — while also making it prominently visible from the lobby below and from busy 42 nd Street. The bar is internally illuminated through its semi-translucent countertop surfaces, and it faces a continuously glazed wall incorporating video screens — a glowing combination clearly visible to pedestrians passing by. At the opposite end of the restaurant, the more formal dining area adjoins an open kitchen. A more secluded room-like space behind the bar area is devoted to a “wine library” with a communal tasting table. A blue and white composition by the artist Per Fronth adorns the wine rack between this space and the bar. The interior surfaces of the projection’s metal framing are painted dark blue, which the architects find is the best way to minimize its presence in the view out. Ceiling panels of the same dark blue suggest the unlimited depth of the night sky. Louvers under the glazed roof of the projection diffuse sunlight striking it and fill the space with reflected illumination.
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