Still, he found ladies night ultimately quite profitable. The other was he wouldnt say anything, just [shrug] that meant it was a failure. One is the van that were filming in thats our set but also a place to stay warm in between shots one is a car for running errands and then theres a truck, guarded by two Doberman pinschers, with all of our lighting and camera equipment. Taylor Mead had a running tab at multiple bars. Bob introduced us, and Dustin congratulated me on the film and told me my acting was naturalistic. It dawned on me that there are so many different styles of acting and you dont have to adhere to just one. And then there were athletes and New York characters a bunch of people who I didnt know what they did, I just knew I saw them all the time. I was breaking up with somebody a long, slow breakup. Id get to the gallery late afternoon. The Penrose. But, pre-AIDS anyway, it was also more diverse. The front window was a queer Mount Rushmore, with the heavyweights looking out onto the street: Rene Ricard, Bill Rice, Peter Hujar, Paul Thek. Id been divorced and on my own since 1977 I had started the business with my husband a decade earlier and it felt like women were waking up. And they said, Yeah, you can have that they werent even thinking about it. As Brad Lauren, a 23-year-old production assistant claimed at the time, having just paid $3.50 for a Miller Lite that ladies were drinking gratis: Its the most socially acceptable form of discrimination., By 1994 lines were down the block at Ski Bar every night and the police started to put up barricades to keep people off Second Avenue. Everyone was very excited. hip-hop open mic nights and more than a few not-entirely-cool bars around the Upper East Side. When AIDS hit, the lines were drawn: You were either straight or gay. Learn more about historic floods. 1982 Having introduced nouvelle cuisine at Ma Maison in Los Angeles, Chef Wolfgang Puck presents "California cuisine" to patrons of his new chic-casual Sunset Strip restaurant, Spago. Now let me write mine. In October of that year, when I was back in New York, the Carters visited the city and Nan invited them to dine with us at Elaines [restaurant]. Chloe 81 Night Clubs Dance Clubs Bars 6.7 Website Amenities: (212) 677-0067 And we had Tina Chow, who had such unearthly beauty she would come into a room and just drift. And I just loved that experience. Theyre exploiting women by using them to attract men, claimed its spokeswoman, Daveda Copeland. Stephanie Chernikowski/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images. We blasted Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson. Their approach was direct and curt, no frills not self-consciously art-directed no frills, but Old Country, 19th-century no frills. No one says they have to leave a tip. I was 19. They were on 51st or 52nd between Fifth and Madison. You couldnt get people to go to a club before midnight. Together, this chorus of voices assembled, edited and condensed creates a compelling mosaic, revealing a city bustling with creativity but also slowly emerging from its recent near-bankruptcy, with upscale restaurants just blocks away from rubble-filled, graffiti-painted lots. Sam was doing Ragtime, and then he did A Soldiers Play on Broadway. A guy in a black cocktail dress teetering precariously on the sill of an open window in a rear apartment (Room 410) of the Chelsea Hotel, screaming into the night. It was all exposed wood and brick, and it had a tiny fireplace, a futon, my books, a sink and a stove. He needed someone he trusted. Wed go to bed among the broken glass, booze and old cigarettes. So the artists would often have free rein, and would sometimes sneak up to the roof, especially for the Fourth of July and other events like that. We had a prom, a debutante ball, a ladies wrestling night. Thats what happened at Club 57 a lot: We told people, This is the theme. The title was an intentional lure the work wasnt about Grace Kelly, but the painter William Schwedler. I was always worried about getting a dirty shirt or chipping a tooth., Ski Bars biggest attraction was the Slalom Shot, a four-foot-long slab of ice with a twisting trail cut into it. One of my responses was to just keep working. My primary motive back then was to put on a show, and anything that slowed me down from that had to be curtailed. Then there were the rumors that they were going to make a movie of the play, and naturally we all thought, Oh my god, were gonna be in a movie! But when the time came to make that movie, they only took Denzel, Larry, and Adolph. Back uptown, Mortimers restaurant was a huge place for me. Could you just call LL so she could just say hi? Everybody knew I knew all the rappers and everything. People thought I was a little crazy. AIDS was a very strange situation; starting in 82 you knew very little about it, and then a few years later you suddenly realized it was the largest killer among your personal friends. It was a kind of a monks cell. I tried to write every single day, first thing in the morning, 10 a.m. Mornings spent alone, writing in a studio in the West Village. 25 East 61st street is the rear extension of 673 Madison Avenue, an Italianate brownstone built in 1871 by architect John G. Prague as part of a project for the developer John McCool which included a row of 5 brownstones on Madison Avenue, and 17 houses on 61st street. I remember I was drawn to the ad for the loft because it was in a place that sounded like trifecta; my father had taken me to the track, so that seemed comforting and familiar. Somebody might have called during the night to say they might have job opportunities, so you always checked your machine. He was in his preppy stage in those days, wearing button-downs, which really is hard to imagine now. Carver came by, down from Syracuse on some publishing business. Despite the lack of a cabaret license, DJ Mike would spin soon-to-be-classics of the moment like Salt-N-Pepas Lets Talk About Sex and Color Me Badds I Wanna Sex You Up, while everyone danced. You werent afraid of getting it, you were wondering when are the symptoms going to show up. The Oldest Bars on the Upper East Side East 86th St Association The legendary Tommy Rowles at Bemelman's (photo credit: VictoriaMcGinley.com) The Oldest Bars on the Upper East Side April 08, 2017 Tracking down the oldest bar on the Upper East Side is no easy task! It was pitch-dark. I would go to these obscure classes around the city that were mostly for dancers. I would go to this rotary sushi place called Genroku. Peter was straight out of Damon Runyon and Weegee. There was always someone between apartments or someone coming to town who needed somewhere to stay. Zipped into a distressed red velvet number, I was the wacky blonde June Buntt, who liked to say the second T is silent. I was married to the astronaut Brad Buntt, who liked to say hed been in space for years now. The writer Dennis Cooper, in blue jean coveralls, was Mavis Purvis, a lesbian farmer living on a rural commune with her girlfriend. As told to Caroline Bankoff,Heather Corcoran,Nancy Hass and M.H. Columbia Pictures had given me this SX-70 camera at a conference, and I started documenting life in the Fire Island Pines [an area of Long Island known as a haven for gay life], which just seemed very important to me. You could be a young person in Manhattan back then, Block recalls. I was like, Oh cool, youre doing art too? Bands would put up fliers all over SoHo; there were wheat-paste fliers everywhere. Adolph would regale us with stories. Madison Pub was an indispensable local dive. Jimmy Carters reputation was tarnished by the hostage crisis in Iran, and I feared that perhaps Norman Mailer, an Elaines regular, or some very politically active and argumentative individual, might stop by our table to express some unfavorable comments. Like Outback, an Australian-themed bar on 93rd and Third Avenue, which hosted Men Are Pigs nights three times a week. We were both rather exotic in each others eyes. In the Early 80s, It Made All the Difference, Oral History: Remembering New Yorks Fiorucci Store, New Yorkers and Their 80s Routines Block by Block, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/80s-nyc-map.html, Ann Magnuson, actress and performance artist. Some of them were open 24 hours a day, or they were closed maybe four hours a day for cleaning. Ski Bar would issue custom-made lift tickets good for eight drinks apiece. We were very, very thin. Everywhere else it was club kids and b-boys with foxtails hanging from their clothes; I had the shoulder pads and the spiky hair and all that. Ann Magnuson performing at Kenny Scharfs opening atop his Ultima Suprema Deluxa Cadillac on November 14, 1983. Elsewhere, so he was going back and forth between doing the TV show and the play. Everything had my initials on it, or the name of somebody else on it; it was really crazy. It was totally improvised, like a live prayer: Do you know that people are dying?, What Happened in New York Between 1981 and 1983, The Artists Who Brought Asian-Americans Into the Annals of Contemporary Art, 5 New York Times Writers on What They Got Right and Wrong in the Early 80s, What New York Was Like in the Early 80s Hour by Hour, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/24-hours-new-york-city-1980s-life.html. And if we didnt have the money, wed go to the matre d it was absurd because this restaurant was in the middle of the slums and say, Can we pay you tomorrow? and theyd let us. And shoulder pads. Other times, it literally meant all-you-could-drink, whatever you wanted to drink, on every single night of the week. So in April we held the Rites of Spring Fertility Bacchanal. Someone broke the front glass and stole the poster. I got up at anywhere from 3 to 5 in the morning and worked as long as I could. Photograph courtesy of Charlie Ahearn, whose groundbreaking hip-hop feature film Wild Style (1983) featured Grandmaster Flash, Lee Quiones and Fab 5 Freddy, among others. Giuliani sending his goons around to raid things. Hearing hip-hop on the street, minimalist new music, free jazz it all added to this fabric that was a landscape. The silence, as they say, was deafening. I went from area to area of the performance space, onstage and offstage. She had made a video of herself dancing to LL Cool J. Ive gotta go to something, Bob will call you. I took the elevator down to the street and I saw a phone booth and the first thought that came to my mind was, Do not call any of your friends and tell them Andy Warhol is doing your book because I dont think thats for real. And sure enough, he didnt. We would get on at the ramp at Chambers Street and ski up to Spring Street to the Ear Inn. We just called it The Bar, which morphed into Ze Bar, like with a fake French accent. But I did it anyway. Hear Rosie Perez talk about her first time at CBGB: Six days a week I arrived every morning between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. Bodega 88 Night Clubs Bars Brew Pubs (19) 8.6 Website (212) 799-1602 573 Columbus Ave New York, NY 10024 CLOSED NOW 2. Darryl McDaniels, musician and member of Run-DMC. But I had no idea what I was photographing. She was the ultimate ballerina, and she became that on Fame. I was excited that I would be able to introduce this new band of gypsies to the Hollywood scene. The crass reason, of course, is because since the beginning of time, straight men have wanted to be drinking in the same place women are drinking because, yes, men are pigs. And then we had Robert Rauschenberg, a rascal and a great man. Clear all filters. Not only did we dress in wigs and dresses from 14th Street, but we took on personas to match. I got my apartment through Stanley Strychacki, the founder of Club 57. It had no closets, so somebody put up a bar so I could hang clothes. I didnt want to fit in. The Penrosenamed for a neighborhood in Cork, Ireland, where two of the owners grew upbrings a bit of the indie-chic East Village to Gossip . Howard was Lili LaLeen, a German film actress in a vintage Mary McFadden. Hed come around maybe at 7 oclock. I was very attached to the Madison Avenue Bookshop, because of my Harvard connection to its owner, Arthur Lehman Loeb, and its excellence. At that time, Chelsea was unexplored territory. I didnt know anything. Hey, I said. It was the three of us. By my late teens, people used to tell me, You and you sister, its like its your job to go clubbing. Maybe five nights a week Id leave Brooklyn around 8:30 or 9 oclock. While her friend Sara explained, We dont even like this place. They would shy away with confused expressions, whispering to their friends. But I didnt feel super cool or anything. I spent a decade in New York City like that. That was the start of the end of this era, says Block. I had been starring on Broadway in West Side Story, and I had done the movie Ragtime, which was also coming out, but dance has always been my heartbeat. Block says it was the first non-nightclub bar on the Upper East Side to have a DJ booth, in this case a ski lift gondola repurposed from Killington Ski Resort. To me, the 1980s were incredibly liberating. When we went out it was to perform. More likely than not, Id have to go downtown to the garment center to get some fabric or trimming. Mom says that your apartment looks like a crack den, my daughter told me once. It was around the corner from another tiny spot called Chandalier. The rain came through, so the clothes were all messed up by brown streaks. At one end of my block was J.G. My sense of time was completely distorted. Patsy Cline. He would maybe drink half a glass of wine. After three, four months there, we decided to turn our loft into a nightclub. Carnegie Deli Carnegie Deli. When I first moved to the city, there was a garbage strike. I lived at the Olympic Tower, and Halston was downstairs. 1983 The Food Marketing Institute reports that 2/3 of all fish consumed in the U.S. is eaten in restaurants. And yet, over the years, bars continued to try to offer ladies night deals (whether discounted or completely free drinks) and various factions had tried to stop them. Landis shot the models one afternoon on the Upper East Side. Theyd say, Yo, Dap, listen to that. All the hip-hop artists came [to the atelier]; there wasnt any other place that catered to rappers. I returned to New York in 81 after 10 years as an expat. We could each get a full breakfast scrambled eggs, hash browns, whole wheat toast with an endless cup of coffee for $5 with tip. And the rest of us were kinda like, Oh man, what? When I was 15, I was in the clubs. Veselka was the go-to place to eat and get cake the lemon bundt or the mohn. My first loss was my partner, around the time Grace Kelly died in 1982. Some of the best bars on the Upper East Side cultivate the feeling of "Old New York.". Talk to the actors as they drifted in about your day, talk about whos auditioning for what. I mean, thats when Brooklyn was Brooklyn, not some extension of the West Village or a place with good coffee. One of many iconic Upper East Side eateries owned by the Santo Family Group . It seems we could start later than this. Guerrilla art activities took place all over. In 80, I got a job at Todds Copy on Mott Street. This scrappy 16mm movie that people werent sure if it was a story movie or a documentary, everybody looked at it and said, I know that guy! They werent public figures; they were locally known graffiti artists, break-dancers, hip-hop M.C.s or D.J.s. My dormitory was at the corner of East 14th Street and Union Square. Nine oclock was the earliest you could go. Linda Goode Bryant, founder of Just Above Midtown Gallery. This was a luxury ski town, not the Upper East Side, and he had to ultimately tone things down. Thurston was a scholar. Then later, it became about getting a gig at Danceteria, Mudd Club they were all little milestone achievements. Upper East Side Aug. 11, 1972 It was a case of mistaken identity, revenge for the sensational rubout of Joey Gallo at Umberto's four months earlier, only this one led to two innocent meat. Belgian, Crepes, Wine Bar, Coffee Shop Menu Available. Harrys Hula Hut had bamboo walls, palm trees, and Nerf basketball available, plus all-you-can-drink beer. Foursquare. The Upper East Side isn't the first or second or 12th neighborhood that comes to mind for fun late-night bars, but that doesn't mean you need to head across the park or 70 blocks south just to take 2am shots of tequila with strangers. Id work for 12 hours straight, prepping for my show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery. Hed walk in and be perfectly comfortable with the Duke of Edinburgh. Home; . Bars would battle to get people in the doors., Then a bar on First Avenue, Far Out Lounge, came up with a gimmick that would change everything, with the ultimate idea to draw in the skirts that bring in the suits.. Then I would go to Macys and go to the $10 rack. Delmonico's, 21-23 William Street (1831-1923, intermittently thereafter) In 1831 Swiss brothers John and Peter Delmonico founded the city's first . There were problems, of course; you serve young men and women as much alcohol as they can humanly consume and theres bound to be. The silhouette I was doing broad shoulders and thin hip was my way of reinterpreting masculine power, but with humor. I would go to school, come home, clean the house, babysit my second and third cousins, hang out on the stoop, wait for my aunt to come home, have dinner with her and wait until she fell asleep then I broke out. LaTanya Richardson Jackson (far right) in Spell #7, 1979. One night I saw Jack Smith do a reading, and I can still remember this line, which kind of sums up that era: The cockroach caravan crosses the rented desert of exotic landlordism.. By 1968, there were a whopping 85 bars on the Upper East Side, most of them singles bars. I also had a tiny place on 12th Street between Greenwich and Washington the top back room of a falling-apart townhouse that the owner was renting out. Normandie Court, a complex of four 34-story beige towers occupying the entire block bounded by East 95th and 96th Streets and Second and Third Avenues, opened around then, offering dirt cheap rent. Can you come back later? I was just out of high school. We had a bar and some makeshift situation where people would collect the door charge, $5 or $10 maybe. The all-you-can-drink deals just dont happen these days, because the rents are so high, says Block. I said, Im very happy for you, youre selling a lot of tickets. In the mornings, Id walk along 125th Street to the store, which I opened in 82. The bodegas played loud salsa music late into the night, as Dominican men played dominoes on the corner. These places were used largely by working-class men, white, black and Latino, people who thought of themselves as straight and gay, many of whom were amenable to sexual things. Today the Upper West Side is considered one of the richest, cleanest, and most expensive places to live in New York City. One day, I was walking uptown to an appointment just before noon, and coming toward me was Robert Duvall. He was the voice of every commercial on the radio or television at that time, and the richest among us. If we werent in a group, I would walk over the bridge, because money was scarce and I wanted to have a token to go back out the next night. In retrospect, Bowie was ahead of the curve. I would be coming back around 4, 4:30, 5 oclock sometimes 6. Ive always been a pretty good cook, and I could make these very good dinners in this tiny kitchen. The elevated West Side Highway, meanwhile, was a place you could ski. It was right next to the Chelsea Hotel, where I was living. I was still riding a little bit high off of the Diana Ross album Diana, which had come out in 1980. Sometimes it was just me and my sister walking up to the velvet rope or the bouncers, or it would be a group of us, and they would let us right in. The Landmarks That Made New York a Cultural Capital, Uptown or Downtown? We would sit at this coffee table and listen to records for an hour. It was a small scene, people like writer Stephen Saban, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and Kenny Scharf. In 1980, I was working as a staff photographer for the New York Post. Sometimes I didnt eat for two days. It was all very small town-y. These parties inevitably blur together in my mind, but I remember that night because a week later, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter at the Binibon cafe, a few doors down the block. Like the Womens Christian Temperance Union. Thelonious Monk or Nina Simone or Gloria Lynne would stop by to visit them, so I grew up around these real bebop superstars. When he got sick, we were in a downward spiral for a year and a half. The old downtown art scene was floundering, while some people, like Robert Mapplethorpe, had risen. In 1981, I had just gotten back from six months on the road with James Brown. 1. But, most women slugging free beers at Brother Jimmys or complimentary Champagne at Jungle Jims or on-the-house Slalom Shots at Ski Bar arguably enjoyed these ladies night deals. Part of how they paid us was they had to strip some wood the house had five fireplaces, and the foyer was original, and all wood. The venues didn't matter to me. Ski Bar turned into a Taco Bell and Block moved to Telluride, Colo., where he and Singer opened a similar bar, Poachers Pub. Separated from the commotion of the day, I would stretch my own canvases and start to paint in the dormitorys common room. The Upper East Side was the place to party in the early 1990s, recalls Jennifer Capobianco, a bartender from the era. Miller, Edited by Kate Guadagnino and Thessaly La Force. He had two responses: Pretty good, was high, high praise. I liked to work out in the late afternoon, because in the morning I wanted to save every iota of energy for my work and the store. 68. Plodding. I had half of the third floor, which was sort of the high-ceilinged fancy room, though it had long, long since stopped being fancy. Poets ruled the evening Tim Dlugos, still a few years from writing his haunting G-9 poem about an AIDS ward, was Bernadette of Lourdes. But as soon as we walked in, nearly everyone stood and applauded. Those were developers terms. On the east side of Lexington, between 78th and 79th, was the best fishmonger Ive ever known: Rosedale. Since no ones making them, they dont.. I was eating very healthfully, which wasnt easy then, seeking out the few macrobiotic restaurants there were. And when she gave me the phone back, she went into [hysterics]. I did not know what my passions or imagination would lead to. I was living uptown really the classic uptown, which, because I was young, seemed a little wild to some people with my kids and my mother (also, at that time I was in love with a Brazilian man Id met in Bali). (What a loft was, I wasnt entirely sure.) Bar owners argued that they should be able to capitalize on the marketplace however they could and that only the State Liquor Authority could outlaw such ladies night deals. Nearby spots like Bear Bar began capitalizing on the traffic by offering their own competing ladies night deals. Things were 50 times as bad in Brooklyn as they were in Manhattan. And why I got out.. We decided to live together at her place, 84 Eldridge Street. Hear Eric Goode remember when he found out about AIDS: I enrolled at the Parsons School of Design in 1982. Certainly at night, few people were there, and few were there on the weekends. We did a deep dive into the most avant-garde, atonal jazz. We called the area TriBeCa, but we laughed about it the same way we laughed at DUMBO. Youd see people that you hadnt seen in months in the street with KS [Kaposis sarcoma] lesions; people would just disappear. Our club-hop starts with the titular Limelight, Gatien's firstand still favoriteNew York club. We would go till 4 a.m. Hell, we would go past 4 a.m. I had the gallery in L.A., and I had just bought a house in Venice, so I was completely overextended, and it worried me. It was like a village, yknow? You would have Rock Steady Crew and Zulu Nation on one side of the room, and this notorious gang called the Ball Busters on the other. The artist David McDermott shot by his then-partner, the artist Peter McGough, East Village, 1983. It all depended on who was playing. Likewise, by the end of the 1990s, the cocktail revival was just about to start in earnest in Manhattan pioneering cocktail bars such as Angels Share and Milk & Honey would open in 1993 and 1999, respectively and the craft beer and brewpub scene was in its infancy, and just about to explode in the aughts. I tried to focus on my art. I had to be at the theater by 7 oclock so I could start my process and get ready before half-hour call. But some places were so beloved theyre still talked about fondly today. Everyone associates me with Jesse Jackson, but actually James Brown is the person I consider most like a mentor. I would get some bus money, some pizza money, some soda money and some money to be able to get into a jam. Not only did Mr. Brown come on with me, but Muhammad Ali did, too. We were such fashion victims. We cant put the money out for something this queer. Then [writer and editor] Bob Colacello saw the project and said, Andy Warhol has a three-book deal with Houghton Mifflin. The bathroom of Area nightclub, which was located on 157 Hudson Street and opened in 1983. They could be stimulated by the heterosexual pornography that was on the screen. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 is sometimes used as a marker of the beginning of the end of the art world as it was then known, as if the two were somehow related, as if an election ushered in some new aesthetic permission, a new vulgarity, which is really a kind of negative magical thinking. (212) 861-2290. Fleming's was a fun Irish bar on the upper east side in the 1980s & 1990s, up until it closed in 1994. (How many spinal taps can you give to someone under a refrigeration blanket whose fever wouldnt break?) Wed been working on the film for a year in dribs and drabs. Guthrie Inn on the other hand perfectly captures how living on the Upper East Side feels in reality; a bit isolated and quiet at times, a haven from downtown at other times, comfortable yet on the rise, and full of an interesting cast of characters. Open in Google Maps. That was Sucker M.C.s., I was still living at home. ), When we go out drinking, we go for broke, one man told The Times. We never served any food, but we always had a couple cases of beer and a basic bar. The ultimate epitome of this wild, boozing-on-the-cheap era, Ski Bar, was located on Second Ave between 94th and 95th. The Roxy was on Fridays, when the party was Wheels of Steel, which initially started at Negril in the East Village. I would write longhand, sit down at the typewriter and type what I had, take those pages across the room to a different chair, sit down and work between the double spaces, do another draft. Youd press your lips to the bottom and Slalom Girls would pour a combo Jaeger/tequila shot that would shush down the slope and into your face. I would stay in the clubs, but I wouldnt dance. And the food at Genroku was really cheap, which was the operative word. Silently. I had just moved the gallery to Franklin Street in TriBeCa from West 57th Street. This was every Friday. Before wine bars, bank branches, and sushi restaurants took over the East Village, there were hole-in-the-wall clubs like 8BC, a gallery and performance space on Eighth Street between Avenues B and C. Opened in 1983, the place was over by the end of 1985. I never had to show the clothes I was making to a buyer, because they always saw it in the clubs first: at Danceteria, at Roxy, at Kool Lady Blues Friday-night party. Maxi Cohen, Area, 1985, Ladies Rooms Around The World, Courtesy of Ai Weiwei Studio and Chambers Fine Art. Rival crews had been dancing in the subway, and it turned into a fight over who had won. Jean-Michel Basquiat wandered in at some point a neighbor with whom we had a nodding acquaintance. I saw Jody Watley on television, and I was like, They dont steal silver, Im going to wear those!. And Dynasty. Ive never gotten over Dynasty. And then people started dying. They called it rocking early breaking, essentially. I worked in my office at home, an eight-room walk-up on the Upper West Side. We didnt pay rent, but it was meant to be $300 a month. The apartment, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, at 87th Street, was like a fantasy apartment huge, with a view of the reservoir. Thats pretty good.. We didnt bother to get any filming permits; the city was just coming out of its bankruptcy crisis, and I dont even know if the mayors film office was up and running. Then it was getting a good time slot at CBGB, so you werent on last and werent on first. It's now a Samsung store. See menus, reviews, ratings and delivery info for the best dining and most popular restaurants in East 80s. The essence of Upper East Side gentility, Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle is also the last public space to display the mural work of Ludwig Bemelmans, creator of the iconic children's book character and prolific illustrator of the 1940s and '50s.