The old guard, of course, had its reasons. We’re speaking about a space designed by Mies van der Rohe, and his disciple Philip Johnson, which was full, as was to be expected, of glass walls, steel beams, curtains gleaming with metal and superb art works. It was pure cutting edge. In the good years, the walls and the clients’ attention fought like spoiled children over groundbreaking works by Picasso, Miró, Pollock or Rothko. Among them, perhaps the most striking was the sculpture by Richard Lippold, a bouquet made up of dozens of bronze bars that hung from the bar’s roof like scalpels.
That restaurant has been a gathering point since 1959, and with unequaled luck in each decade, for American high society, whose members knew they would rub shoulders with…
