21 Club Restaurant (New York City, New York)

 restaurant, interesting place, commercial building

5-story commercial building completed in 1872, originally as a townhouse. The first version of the club opened in Greenwich Village in 1922, run by cousins Jack Kreindler and Charlie Berns. It was originally a small speakeasy known as the Red Head. In 1925 the location was moved to a basement on Washington Place and its name was changed to Frontón. The following year it moved uptown to 42 West 49th Street, changed its name to the Puncheon Club, and became much more exclusive. In late 1929, to make way for the construction of Rockefeller Center, the club moved to its current location and changed its name to "Jack and Charlie's 21".

Walter Winchell got kicked out and provoked a raid with his column, after which ingenious liquor-destroying devices and a secret wine vault were installed to a design by Frank Buchanan. Although raided by police numerous times during Prohibition, the two were never caught. As soon as a raid began, a system of levers was used to tip the shelves of the bar, sweeping the liquor bottles through a chute and into the city's sewers. The bar also included a secret wine cellar, which was accessed through a hidden door in a brick wall which opened into the basement of the building next door (number 19).

Though still used as a wine cellar, part of the vault has been remodeled to allow a party of up to 20 guests to dine in private. 21 also stored the private wine collections of such celebrities as Presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford; Joan Crawford; Elizabeth Taylor; Hugh Carey; Ernest Hemingway; Ivan Boesky; The Nordstrom Sisters; Frank Sinatra; Al Jolson; Gloria Vanderbilt; Sophia Loren; Mae West; Zsa Zsa Gabor; Aristotle Onassis; Gene Kelly; Gloria Swanson; Judy Garland; Sammy Davis, Jr.; and Marilyn Monroe.

Mayor Jimmy Walker had a discreet private booth in the cellar. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had their first date here; Ernest Hemingway was caught with Legs Diamond's girlfriend in the kitchen; John F. Kennedy ate here the night before his inauguration. (Every president since FDR has visited here--save George W. Bush.) Other regulars have included Alfred Hitchcock, Salvador Dali, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Joan Crawford and Aristotle Onassis. Margo Channing runs into Eve Harrington here in All About Eve; J.J. Hunsecker eats with Sidney Falco here in The Sweet Smell of Success, as do the Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen characters in Wall Street and Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big on Sex and the City. Jimmy Stewart gets take-out from here in Rear Window.

The line of painted cast-iron jockeys that adorned the balcony above the entrance was a tradition dating back to the late 1930s; many of them represent famous horses. There were 33 jockeys on the exterior of the building, and four more inside the doors. In summer of 2015, all 37 jockeys were removed for a three-month artist restoration and returned on October 21, 2015 for a ribbon cutting. In November 2020, in the wake of Covid-19 closures, the club's managers stated that it made the decision to keep the club permanently closed. The signature jockey statues were removed in December 2020.

The facade is clad in painted limestone, rusticated at the lower levels. The entrance is at the west end, with bronze-and-glass double-doors and transom. It is covered by a rounded metal-and-fabric canopy that extends out to the wrought-iron gate and ornate fence that fronts the building. Another gate near the east end opens to a secondary entrance with a black metal door set in the side of a sideways-facing staircase. The stairs lead up to a 2nd-floor balcony with ornate wrought-iron railing and a black wooden door into the projecting east end of the facade. The cast-iron jockeys line the balcony and the stairs. The protruding east is rusticated at the 2nd floor, and has quoins at the corners of the floors above, extending all the way up to the roof line and just above the cornice that crowns the rest of the facade; there are no openings in this section except for a small oval window at the top floor, and narrow single-windows in the west-facing sidewall at the 3rd & 4th floors. Wrought-iron pilasters extend up from the balcony to support a sloped metal roof at the top of the 2nd floor. Behind the balcony are expansive multi-paned windows with black wooden exterior shutters.

More quoins join the projecting east end with the rest of the set-back facade. The 3rd floor has four bays of 2-over-4 windows is elaborate projecting surrounds, with beaded side moldings and decorative lintels broken by keystones. There are two bays of similar windows at the west end of the 4th floor, with the east end featuring a boldly-projecting bay window. The 5th floor has four bays of round-arched windows in simpler stone surrounds. The facade is crowned by a black metal roof cornice, divided into two parts, with a smaller third part next to the projecting east end; the cornice has brackets, modillions, and dentils.

www.21club.com/
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