It was headline news when restaurateur Danny Meyer announced high rents were forcing him to shutter his first restaurant, Union Square Café (USC), after 30 years in New York. The space, designed by Warren Ashworth and the late Larry Bogdanow, had long been an award-winning fan favorite, and fiercely loyal customers mourned as if they had lost a loved one.
He promised a new venue in a new space, despite the skepticism of those who feared that the alchemy of location, food, and service could never be duplicated. “When we toured spaces, in addition to assessing whether any given one had the right feel, we’d have someone in both heels and flat shoes walk from the original restaurant to the potential new location equipped with a stopwatch and pedometer,” explains Meyer. “We even had a cook push a cart filled with vegetables from the [square’s] Greenmarket to the potential new space. This brought us to the decision that we should be within a maximum three- to four-block radius of the existing restaurant so we could still call it Union Square Café and be geographically correct.” He indeed found a spot three blocks to the north of the old venue, turning to Rockwell Group (which calls Union Square home) to maintain the integrity and charm of the original design.
Meyer says he told David Rockwell (a longtime USC patron) and the design team to “think evolution rather than revolution with the new space.” According to Greg Keffer, principal and studio leader at Rockwell Group, the move allowed them to improve upon the inaugural restaurant, which Meyer had settled in without major structural changes. To get the feel just right, “We designed it through elements rather than the big picture first,” explains Keffer. “It’s the opposite of how we work as designers.”
The team was inspired by the original green wainscoting, the cherry wood, and the bar. “When all of those things came together, they came together in a magical way,” he adds. But challenges remained: “We wanted to reinvent a bit but wanted the DNA that made it so special to carry over—familiar but also new and relevant. Danny’s charge to us was to make it feel like ‘coming home’ and [simultaneously] fresh.”
To that end, this USC is lighter, airier (with two huge windows fronting 19th Street and Park Avenue South), and more open than the warren of smaller rooms that characterized its predecessor. Devotees of the old restaurant will be comforted to see the mahogany bar that is exactly the same length—27 feet 1 inch—of the one in the former space (over the years, USC lifted the practice of dining at the bar to something of an art form). Just beyond is a cherry wood staircase leading to the mezzanine, where diners have a sweeping, people-watching view of the main floor. “There are a number of smaller spaces that allow for intimate dining,” says Keffer, “but you’re still a part of the energy of the room.”
Tucked into the back of the mezzanine level is another bar for dining; for those patrons who love to hug the familiar, it is built from a portion of the original bar—a bit of a secret closely held by regulars and Meyer’s favorite area.
The number of seats has increased from 130 to 238, including two private dining rooms (which weren’t an option previously). Custom chairs were refreshed from the old design, while custom light fixtures hanging from the 22-foot-tall ceiling in the main dining room are made from spun metal with a burnished copper finish—“to add sparkle” to the room, he adds.
USC’s extensive art collection was brought to the new location and reframed, including works from Robert Kushner, Judy Rifka, Frank Stella, and Claes Oldenberg. For the right placement, Rockwell Group provided Meyer with a scale model of the space, miniatures of the paintings, and a pair of tweezers. “He spent weeks playing with the artworks and finding a place for each of them,” says Keffer. Even a huge Rifka mural from the original spot found a home: it was cut into pieces and each one was reframed and hung as another nod to the original’s roots.
Along with the move, USC added sister restaurant, Daily Provisions (also from Rockwell Group) just east of its entrance that offers takeaway items like sandwiches and pastries with bread baked fresh on site. Blue is the predominant color, with accents of brass, wood, and marble and a few bar seats and tables for standing, but its main function is to be a local hub, what Meyer calls a “gift to the neighborhood.”
