290 Eighth Avenue

 restaurant, interesting place, historic remains

4-story Federal-style mixed-use building completed in 1845 as a 3-story building. The ground floor was later converted to a saloon, and in 1886 a fourth floor was added, and the building (now occupied by The Alaska Club) was extended a few feet to the north where a passageway once separated it from No. 292. The facade is clad in orange brick, with the ground floor recessed behind thin, white-painted stone piers and iron gates between them. The main entrance is on the right, and the rest of the ground floor has a recessed bronze door and fanlight between bronze-framed windows.

The upper floors have three bays of single-windows. At the 2nd & 3rd floors they have brick sills and lintels, and white wooden framing. The added 4th floor has shorter window openings, now bricked-in, and the brick on this floor is painted over in several layers, most recently in red. The attic floor is set off by a white metal band course, and the window openings have white, splayed lintels. There is a wreath adorning the space to the left of the openings. The facade is crowned by a white-and-red metal roof cornice with brackets, dentils, and panels.

A saloon continued to operate on the ground floor until 1899, when Miss May Agnew leased the building from Fannie Crawford and opened The Eighth Avenue Mission, operating here until 1947. After the mission moved out, the building suffered a period of neglect before briefly being home to “Rome,” a gay bar. Then in 2003 the one-time saloon and Christian Mission experienced an astonishing make-over. As the vintage Biltmore Hotel near Grand Central Terminal was being demolished, interiors were salvaged and some were installed here. Passing through great wrought iron gates outside, the patron found himself surrounded by marble panels, bronze ornamentation and Versailles-type mirrors. The space was turned into a restaurant by Gary Robins in 2003 named The Biltmore Room. By 2009 the space was taken over by Danny Kane who converted it to a dual-purpose venue – an upscale restaurant during dinner hours transforming into a nightclub late at night. In 2018, it became the 8th Avenue location of the famed Lombardi’s pizzeria, but this restaurant closed in 2020. The ground floor is now occupied by Anixi vegan restaurant.