Café des Artistes

Not to be confused with the Manhattan building in which the Café was located nor the Café des Artistes in Puerto Vallarta.

Café des Artistes was a fine restaurant at 1 West 67th Street in Manhattan. New York City. It was owned by George Lang, who closed the restaurant in early August 2009 and announced later that month that the restaurant would remain closed permanently.^[1] His wife, Jenifer Lang, had been the managing director of the restaurant since 1990.^[2]

Café des Artistes
Front entrance to Café des Artistes in October 2008
Restaurant information
Established	1917 (1917)
Closed	2009 (2009)
Food type	French
Street address	1 West 67 Street
City	New York
State	New York
Postal/ZIP Code	10023

History

The restaurant first opened in 1917,^[3] at street level of the Hotel des Artistes tower. Café des Artistes was designed for the residents of the Hotel des Artistes, since the apartments lacked kitchens. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Norman Rockwell, Isadora Duncan and Rudolph Valentino were patrons.^[4] Late in 1985, there was a fire in the kitchen, but the restaurant was able to reopen.^[5]

In early September 2009, two years into the Great Recession, Lang announced that the café was closing; shortly thereafter, Lang filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, claiming debts of nearly $500,000, some of which was owed to a union benefit trust.^[6] At the time, he also faced a lawsuit from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Welfare Fund.^[6]

Ready for outdoor dining

In 2011, a new restaurant, the Leopard at des Artistes, opened in the location. According to the New York Times, it caters to those in New York society who derive "fame from power rather than the other way around".^[7]

The murals

The restaurant's famous murals, retained in the new restaurant's 2011 renovation,^[7] were painted by Howard Chandler Christy. Christy was a tenant of the building, Hotel des Artistes, until his death in 1952.^[8][4] There are six panels of wood nymphs, the first of which were completed in 1934. Other Christy works on display include paintings such as The Parrot Girl, The Swing Girl, Ponce De Leon, Fall, Spring, and the Fountain of Youth.^[3]

In popular culture

• 1981: It is the setting for the film My Dinner with Andre. Actual filming took place in the then-unoccupied Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia.
• 1986: It is the location of dinner between Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke in the film 9½ Weeks.^[9]
• 1988: In the Star Trek: The Next Generation first-season episode "We'll Always Have Paris, Captain Jean-Luc Picard visits a holographic recreation of a restaurant in 24th-century Paris that bore the same name.
• 1993: It is the location of a poker lesson in the Woody Allen film Manhattan Murder Mystery.^[10]
• 1994: In the Friends second-season episode "The One With The Bullies", Monica states that she was a sous chef at the restaurant.
• 1996: The film The First Wives Club used the restaurant as the location where the three women have lunch after their friend's funeral.
• 2007: In the Gossip Girl first-season, Blair Waldorf states that she was supposed to have lunch here with her mother, like they used to when they were younger.
• 2024: In the TV series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Lee Radziwiłł suggests the restaurant and Lutece as a possible place for their next lunch together, as possible alternatives to their typical lunch spot La Côte Basque.