In 1930’s Manhattan a chain of long forgotten restaurants brought café society elegance to the middle class. It all began when wholesaler Henry Lustig opened his first restaurant in 1919 at Madison Avenue and 78th Street. Being a race horse owner, Lustig decided to name his restaurant  Longchamps, after the famous Parisian racecourse. Longchamps specialized in offering an American version of French style cuisine at affordable prices. It met with fast success. By the mid 1920’s the company expanded, opening two new restaurants. One near the recently opened Saks Fifth Avenue, to cash in on the shopping trade.

In mid to late 1930’s the chain rapidly expanded, opening seven restaurants within five years. During this period Longchamps began their relationship with German émigré artist Winold Reiss (1886 – 1953). Reiss’ interior designs in four of these restaurants epitomized modern taste.

 

42nd Street and Lexington Avenue – The Chanin Building

On January 23, 1935 The New York Times announced the plans for the seventh restaurant in the Longchamps chain:

Louis Allen Abramson, architect, filed plans yesterday for an alteration in the Chanin Building, 122 East Forty-second Street. The changes will be made in space in the basement and first floor to be occupied by  a Longchamps Restaurant.

The first floor will be designed as a men’s grill, having an island bar eighty feet in circumference. The improvement will cost $100,000, the architect estimated. – The New York Times, January 23, 1935, Pg. 33. 

 

Winold Reiss, working in collaboration with architect Abramson, transformed the irregular shaped space into something special. Their use of mirrors, lighting, murals and a glamorous staircase combined to create a chic dining atmosphere.

 

May 15, 1935 The New York Times reported on the opening:

A new unit in the Longchamps chain of restaurants will be opened today. It occupies space on the ground floor and basement of the Chanin Building at Lexington Avenue and Forty-second Street. A feature of the decorations by Winold Reiss is a series of eight mural panels depicting garden scenes in the time of Louis XIV. – The New York Times, May 15, 1935, Pg. 40.

 

 

A few days later the New York Post enthusiastically wrote:

AN ART, EATING – AT LONGCHAMPS

Glittering Lexington Avenue Restaurant’s a Feast to Eye as Well as Palate

When epicures die they may go to heaven but in the meantime they can always go to Longchamps, and especially the last and most glittering of the Longchamps restaurants in the Chanin Building on Lexington Avenue. 

It is a feast to the eye as well as the palate. The decor, we are told is based on that gayest and most wicked of periods in French history, the time before the Revolution when the courts were at their best and worst, when living was lavish and high and handsome.

And that is just the feeling that one gets on entering the cocktail salon of this Longchamps. The colors are vermilion, black and white, and it is safe to say you will never go out the same man!

A Vista of Gardens

A grand staircase leads to the dining room below, and at a turn of the stairs a vista of sunlit gardens is spread before your eyes. The famous designer, Winold Reiss, certainly knows his French gardens and has produced them to the life in the murals that encompass the room. – New York Post, May 19, 1935. Pg. 6

 

 

 

Upon its opening in May of 1935 the Chanin Building Longchamps was one of the largest restaurants in the area. The following year the New York Herald-Tribune reported:

 

Longchamps Chain to Occupy Additional Unit

The Restaurant Longchamps, which operated a unit in the Chanin Building, Lexington Avenue and Forty-second Street, have leased as additional space the store and basement at the southwest corner of the thoroughfares now occupied by Broadstreet’s. The enlarged restaurant will compare favorably in size of both restaurant and bar facilities with the chain’s new unit under construction at Broadway and Forty-first Street. – New York Herald-Tribune, June 9, 1936, Pg. 41.

 

The same day The New York Sun reporting on the expansion remarked that the enlargement would make the restaurant the largest in the Grand Central District. By the time the renovations on East Forty-second were underway a new and even larger Longchamps was nearing completion across town on West Forty-first street.

 

41st Street & Broadway

 

 

Located in Ely Jacques Kahn’s Continental Building (1931), the new restaurant would be as modern as the building. For the decorative scheme inside this Longchamps Reiss chose to honor New York City’s past, present and future. Unfortunately there are not too many photographs that exist of the interior at this location. The news of the latest restaurant hit the papers on March 15, 1936:

Longchamps Restaurant Takes Lease of Street Floor in Continental Building

Longchamps announced yesterday it will open a branch restaurant in the Continental Building at the south-east corner of Broadway and Forty-first Street, in the Times Square section. The restaurant will be ready for the opening  of the theatrical season next fall. The entire interior of the premises will be made over. It was said yesterday that the restaurant will provide accommodation for 1,500 persons at one time. One feature of the new restaurant will be an oval-shaped bar which will be 200 feet long, one of the longest continuous drinking platforms in the city. More than 500 waiters, chefs, barmen and others will be employed in the establishment which, it was said yesterday, may be opened night and day. – New York Herald-Tribune, March 15, 1936, Pg. 11

 

 

By late April with the awarding of construction contracts, alterations of the space began for the $500,000 restaurant. Architect Louis Allen Abramson created an outdoor cafe effect on the main floor by having the walls along Broadway and Forty-first street and the revolving door lowered to sub-street level. Of course the lowering of the walls only occurred during warm weather months. This proved popular and a couple of future Longchamps also included descending walls.

 

 

 

Like the last Longchamps, Winold Reiss received the commission for the interior design at the Forty-first Street location. Modern and contemporary throughout with silk batik and a series of murals by Reiss. These blue, white and gold murals would depict future Manhattan.

 

City of the Future Mural

 

Abramson’s bold ceiling employed curves and levels. While giving the Album Room a very modern aesthetic, it also concealed the cove lighting. The ceiling curves matched those on the floor by mimicking the sinuous half wall (to divide seating areas) and steps.

 

 

The new Longchamps opened its doors on October 13, 1936.  Due to its proximity to the Broadway Theatres and the Metropolitan Opera, it found immediate popularity. The following day The New York Times reported:

30 MEN TEND HUGE BAR

New Restaurant in Times Square Also Has Vast Wine Cellar.

One of the largest restaurants in the Times Square district, the tenth in the Longchamps chain, was opened last night in the Broadway Continental Building, with business executives and celebrities of the stage and screen in attendance.

New York’s growth and old favorites of Broadway are recalled in the murals and decorations of the restaurant, which features a wine cellar with a capacity of 120,000 bottles and an oval bar with thirty bartenders. 

In the cocktail lounge, murals depict important scenes in New York’s history and in the adjoining rooms, “dedicated to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.” are large murals designed to show the city of the future. The Album on New Yorkers’ Room contains portraits of celebrities, including O. Henry, Florenze Ziegfeld and David Belasco.  – The New York Times, October 14, 1936, Pg. 28.

Several days later the New York Herald-Tribune had this to say:

New Longchamps a Smash

Record crowds (6,700 for luncheon alone) attended the opening of the new Longchamps at Broadway and Forty-first Street, Tuesday. The restaurant boasts air-conditioned kitchen and telephone booths, a huge oval bar and a glass street front that can be lowered on an elevator shaft. – New York Herald-Tribune, October 17, 1936, Pg. 8

 

Typical Menu, 1938

 

253 Broadway

 

 

Across lower Broadway from City Hall the eleventh Longchamps became the most expensive and largest restaurant built-in New York City to date. Occupying space in the basement and first three floors of the 1892 Paragon Building, major structural changes were necessary to accommodate the restaurant. This Longchamps would be a “five-in-one”, meaning there were five separate restaurant units at this site. This new location could seat 1,163 people at one time.  Total cost of construction and interior design, $1,000,000, a first for the city.

 

 

Winold Reiss using over 2,000 square feet of wall space for murals, the decorative theme according to The New York Times:

. . . will be an interweaving of the types, customs and costumes of the nations of the world. The theme is intended to portray the international relationships with which the location traditionally has been associated. – The New York Times, July 21, 1937, Pg. 40

 

 

At this Longchamps and the following one Reiss worked in collaboration with famed New York City architect Ely Jacques Kahn. Kahn arranged the almost acre of space into a series of connected terraces. The terraces were arranged in such a way to allow views of the restaurant from any of the floors. This included the lifting of part of the second floor for the creation of a new mezzanine level.

 

 

Like all the recent Longchamps this one was a showcase of modern design. Black vitrolite and two stories of glass block crowned the main entrance. The use of the glass block flooded the second floor with natural light.

 

 

Other modern amenities would include complete air conditioning with an ionization plant to supposedly charge the air with a lively freshness, indirect lighting and an acoustical treatment to bring a quietness to the dining rooms.

 

 

A dinner for 1,500 guests formally opened the restaurant on March 22, 1938. Among the guests were former New York State governor Al Smith and the  models  who posed for the murals by Winold Reiss that adorned the walls. These models were present in the costumes that they wore in the murals and included a Chickahominy native from Virginia, girls from Tibet and Tahiti, a Utah cowgirl, a native of Sicily and citizens from several countries all who were living in New York at the time.

 

On the ground floor the “Snug Harbor Bar” dominated the south side of the restaurant. Even though “snug” was part of the name there was nothing snug about the very long bar running almost the entire length of the establishment. A novel feature was the lighting underneath the front edge illuminating the outside of the bar.

 

Placed down in the basement the “Westward Ho! Grill” decorated in knotty pine provided a secluded area to dine and enjoy a cocktail. Lining one wall of the grill a mural depicting 15th Century ships sailing off to the New World gave the room its decorative theme.

 

 

 

 

 

A boldly painted staircase with a huge mural led up from the ground floor to the “Flying Bridge Cafe” on the newly built mezzanine level and the second floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continuing up the stairs from the “Flying Bridge Cafe” would take one to the third level where there were two more additional dining rooms. The dining space at the very top of the stairs was known as the “Far Eastern Terrace”.

 

 

 

The balance of the third level was taken up by “the Restaurant of the Old World”. This largest single dining space in the restaurant had murals by Reiss depicting the peoples and the customs of Europe.

 

 

 

Like all the previous restaurants in the Longchamps chain this one was another success. While the first customers were filing into 253 Broadway in March of 1938, a 12th Longchamps was already under construction in the most famous building in the world.

 

The Empire State Building

The 12th and last Longchamps to open in the 1930’s was another collaboration between artist Winold Reiss and architect Ely Jacques Kahn. Unlike the previous Longchamps decorated by Reiss, the one in the Empire State Building would not have a particular theme, like pre-revolutionary France in the Chanin Building Longchamps or old world / new world in the one on lower Broadway near City Hall. The New York Sun reported on December 15, 1937 that Longchamps took a 21 year lease for space at the 5th Avenue and Thirty-fourth street corner of the Empire State Building. The space which had been vacant since the building opened in 1931, would be converted into an ultra modern restaurant with a seating capacity for 1,000.

 

 

The new restaurant occupied the entire northeast section of the first floor, basement and sub-basement. Missing the originally announced opening date of May 1st, Al Smith, president of Empire State, Inc. opened the restaurant on September 21, 1938. Smith said in his welcoming speech that he believed “the architecture, decoration, service and food will do much to uphold the fine standards of Fifth Avenue and the Empire State area.”

 

It is especially noticeable at this Longchamps the changing style of interior decoration. Today, while this is still considered Art Deco, it comes near the end of that design era. Gone is the crazy exuberance and harsh angles of the 1920’s. By 1938 a new European influence is evident, popularized at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne held in Paris, 1937. Design elements are softer, dominated by biomorphic forms and curves.

 

 

An exuberantly painted bar greeted patrons on the ground floor. From there a large dining room filled the space at street level. To get down to lower levels a wide steel and mirror lined staircase led to the basement. Reiss continued the vermillion, cream and gold Longchamp color scheme at this latest location.

 

 

 

 

 

With the opening of the Empire State location the Longchamps chain reached its peak.  Winold Reiss continued to receive commissions from Longchamps into the 1940’s and 1950’s for locations in New York City and else where. But after suffering a stroke in 1951 Reiss’ output would be greatly reduced. On August 23, 1953 Reiss died in New York City. As for Longchamps its fortunes would start to change after the Second World War.

 

Post Second World War

It seems that Longchamps proprietor, Henry Lustig, started cheating the IRS in 1940. An audit in 1945 revealed that he and two of his associates had evaded paying $2,872,766.00 in taxes to the government. Brought to trial in May, 1946 the case reached a verdict on June 20 of that year. When sentenced on July 10th, Lustig had to pay $115,000.00 fine and received a four-year jail term.

 

In 1947 the government sold all of Longchamps stock to Valley Trust Co., nominee for the Springfield newspaper pension trusts and its subsidiary, Exchange Buffet Corp. Through the 1950’s Longchamps annual sales ran between $7,000,000.00 and $8,000,000.00 but lost money every year, except 1954 when it made a small profit of $7,258.00. Restaurateur Jan Mitchell acquired Longchamps in early 1959. He believed that the chain still held great potential. In 1950 Mitchell purchased the famous German restaurant, Luchow’s on 14th Street in Manhattan and tripled its business by the end of the decade.

 

Beginning with the new decade it would be out with the old and in with the “Olde Tyme”. The interior decorations that were so modern and chic in the 1930’s had become tired and dated by 1960. The first change came to the lower level at the Longchamps in the Empire State Building. In honor of Luchows, Mitchell converted Reiss’ dining room into a Bavarian brauhaus. Martin Burden in his “Going Out Tonight? . . .” column in the New York Post described the room this way:

. . . the big terraced downstairs area becomes the Karneval Room, a gay and pleasant rathskeller. It stresses hearty German foods, big steins of imported beer, an oom-pa-pa band clad in lederhosen to provide the music, everything from ‘Ach, du Lieber Augustine’ to ‘You Are My Sunshine. There are souvenir hats, community sings, beer barrels, red-and-white checkered tablecloths, brightly colored paper streamers, huge confetti balls. Its cheery atmosphere should provide a fine attraction in the midtown section.  – New York Post, February 9, 1960, Pg. 51.

 

The Teutonic gaiety didn’t last very long and in the early months of 1964 the entire Empire State Longchamps underwent a complete renovation. And on April 16, 1964  “sailing” into the Empire State Building was Mark Twain’s Riverboat Restaurant. Do not be confused by the name, Mark Twain was not personally affiliated with the restaurant in any way.

 

Now instead of offering classic Longchamp dishes, like sizzling platters or crepe suzette, one could order “Good Vittles”. And why enjoy just a regular old style cocktail when “Hard Likker” was now being offered which one might need to drown out all the “banjos a-plunkin'”. In his “Tips on Tables” in the New York World-Telegram & Sun, Bob Dana had this to say of the renovated restaurant:

Tuneful Debut For Riverboat

The Mark Twain Riverboat Restaurant, inspired by the life and works of the beloved American author, will be unveiled by Jan Mitchell tomorrow at Longchamps in the Empire State Building. There will be dancing to the music of Stan Rubin and his Riverboat Ramblers, with additional music by a costumed banjo group, which will promenade through both levels of the restaurant. 

Stage designer Oliver Smith has designed the restaurant, the main floor  of which is largely a recreation of a dining saloon of a steamer that Mark Twain might have piloted down the Mississippi. Adjacent to the dining room are remainders of the high-stake gambling that flourished on riverboats; the Gaming Room and Gambler’s Den. Over the deep mirrored stairwell leading to the lower floor is a large revolving replica of a paddlewheel, gleaning in the reflection of lights that outline a huge horseshoe bar. 

A large selection of dishes, adapted from foods popular along the Mississippi of Mark Twain’s day, have been added to the extensive Longchamps menu. – New York World-Telegram & Sun, April 15, 1964, Pg. 36.

 

The renovated restaurant proving to be a hit, inspiring more Longchamps renovations the next year. Oliver Smith transformed the Art Deco spaces into 1960’s versions of nostalgia. The Chanin Building’s pre-revolutionary France theme was out. Now a railroad decor took its place, due to the proximity of Grand Central Terminal across the street.

 

When Mitchell sold the chain to the Riese Brothers in 1967 the end was in sight. The Riese Corporation already purchased another famous New York City chain, Childs, now they swallowed Longchamps.  By 1970 only one restaurant in the chain still operated under the Longchamps name. The holding company Longchamps, Inc. formally dissolved in 1975.

 

Like so much of New York City’s past, Longchamps has vanished not only from the city but from most people’s memories. Which is a shame, for it was the most stylish of all the city’s eateries.

 

 

Anthony & Chris (The Freakin’, Tiquen’ Guys)

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Vanished New York City Art Deco: The Persian Room

The Central Park Casino, Joseph Urban’s Long, Lost New York City Night Club