Larry Bogdanow, an architect whose love for natural materials and fine craftsmanship brought a sense of warmth and ease to the interiors of dozens of Manhattan’s most popular restaurants, including Union Square Café, Savoy and the Cub Room, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 64.
The cause was a brain tumor, Daniel Kohs, a partner in Mr. Bogdanow’s architectural firm, said.
Mr. Bogdanow (pronounced BOG-duh-now), the founder and an owner of Bogdanow Partners Architects, brought a contemporary Arts and Crafts sensibility to restaurant design, using rich colors and woods like cherry, pear and pecan to create an atmosphere of relaxed luxury, usually in restaurants that were intimate in scale and run by owner-chefs rather than large companies.
At his country home in Chatham, N.Y., he was a part-time farmer and an enthusiast of the ecologically oriented, traditionalist slow food movement, a sideline that put him on the same wavelength as many of the chefs and restaurateurs he worked with.
Mr. Bogdanow’s first important restaurant design job was for Union Square Café, owned by Danny Meyer, in the mid-1980s. In his book “Setting the Table,” Mr. Meyer recalled asking Mr. Bogdanow and his colleague Warren Ashworth to create a restaurant “that looked as if no architect had ever been there,” one that was “easy, comfortable and timeless.”
Those three adjectives were magic words for Mr. Bogdanow, who responded with an airy interior, elegant but casual, with cherry-wood floors and green wainscoting, that realized Mr. Meyer’s somewhat paradoxical concept of an American trattoria.
Mr. Bogdanow went on to design a number of restaurants notable for their resistance to design trends and respect for architectural history, including the Cub Room in SoHo and City Hall in TriBeCa for their chef and owner, Henry Meer; Union Pacific and Beppe in the Flatiron district; and, for the chef and owner Bill Telepan, Telepan on the Upper West Side.
One of his most enticing and intimate restaurants, Wild Blue, opened on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in 1999 and was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“His interest in urban craftsmanship, evident in restaurants like Union Square Café and the Cub Room, really anticipated the industrial urban aesthetic that’s prevalent right now, although he was more fabric and wood than metal and glass,” the designer David Rockwell said. “He created iconic projects, but he always designed from the details out — the light-fixture level.”
Lawrence Bailey Bogdanow was born on Feb. 24, 1947, in Houston. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 1970, he moved to New York and settled in SoHo when the neighborhood was being colonized by artists.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1977 and worked briefly as an architectural designer for Beyer Blinder Belle, an architectural firm specializing in historic preservation. In 1978 he founded his own firm, New City Designs, which evolved into Bogdanow Partners Architects.
At first, Mr. Bogdanow mostly did residential interiors, and his ideas carried over into his design work for restaurants, where he put a premium on natural flow, comfort and a relaxed atmosphere.
“His hallmarks were beautifully crafted light fixtures with unusual metal finishes and wood detailing that felt uniquely American and urban,” Mr. Rockwell said. “He used a lot of copper and metals that developed a patina with age. You could say the same for his restaurants.”
He quickly developed a reputation as a designer who could work miracles with small budgets. In an interview with the authors of “Successful Restaurant Design,” he revealed a couple of his tricks, like using blond Masonite walls and applying a lacquer finish to create a leather effect, as he did at Savoy, an enduring favorite in SoHo, or painting pine floors green and red and then waxing them, letting the paint chip over time to produce a multicolored look.
At Mr. Meer’s restaurant City Hall, in a landmarked mid-19th-century building on Duane Street with cast-iron columns, he combined what had been two restaurants into one large dining room of 10,000 square feet, with light pear-wood tables, curved booths and a period feel accentuated by historic photos of New York.
“If you crossed the ‘21’ Club with Balthazar and threw in a bit of the Oyster Bar, you would end up with something like City Hall,” Ruth Reichl wrote in her review of the restaurant in The New York Times in 1999. “No wonder everybody likes the place so much.”
Mr. Bogdanow’s other projects included the atrium and the screening room at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel and, outside New York, Rubicon in San Francisco and Caliterra in Chicago.
He is survived by his wife, the documentary filmmaker Deborah Shaffer; a daughter, Maya; a sister, Barbara Lavi of Weston, Conn.; and a brother, Michael, of Boston.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bogdanow
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/dining/larry-bogdanow-architect-dies-at-64.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=6327E78885D78D03D0FA6BF7778C6929&gwt=pay
The cause was a brain tumor, Daniel Kohs, a partner in Mr. Bogdanow’s architectural firm, said.
Mr. Bogdanow (pronounced BOG-duh-now), the founder and an owner of Bogdanow Partners Architects, brought a contemporary Arts and Crafts sensibility to restaurant design, using rich colors and woods like cherry, pear and pecan to create an atmosphere of relaxed luxury, usually in restaurants that were intimate in scale and run by owner-chefs rather than large companies.
At his country home in Chatham, N.Y., he was a part-time farmer and an enthusiast of the ecologically oriented, traditionalist slow food movement, a sideline that put him on the same wavelength as many of the chefs and restaurateurs he worked with.
Mr. Bogdanow’s first important restaurant design job was for Union Square Café, owned by Danny Meyer, in the mid-1980s. In his book “Setting the Table,” Mr. Meyer recalled asking Mr. Bogdanow and his colleague Warren Ashworth to create a restaurant “that looked as if no architect had ever been there,” one that was “easy, comfortable and timeless.”
Those three adjectives were magic words for Mr. Bogdanow, who responded with an airy interior, elegant but casual, with cherry-wood floors and green wainscoting, that realized Mr. Meyer’s somewhat paradoxical concept of an American trattoria.
Mr. Bogdanow went on to design a number of restaurants notable for their resistance to design trends and respect for architectural history, including the Cub Room in SoHo and City Hall in TriBeCa for their chef and owner, Henry Meer; Union Pacific and Beppe in the Flatiron district; and, for the chef and owner Bill Telepan, Telepan on the Upper West Side.
One of his most enticing and intimate restaurants, Wild Blue, opened on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in 1999 and was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“His interest in urban craftsmanship, evident in restaurants like Union Square Café and the Cub Room, really anticipated the industrial urban aesthetic that’s prevalent right now, although he was more fabric and wood than metal and glass,” the designer David Rockwell said. “He created iconic projects, but he always designed from the details out — the light-fixture level.”
Lawrence Bailey Bogdanow was born on Feb. 24, 1947, in Houston. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 1970, he moved to New York and settled in SoHo when the neighborhood was being colonized by artists.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1977 and worked briefly as an architectural designer for Beyer Blinder Belle, an architectural firm specializing in historic preservation. In 1978 he founded his own firm, New City Designs, which evolved into Bogdanow Partners Architects.
At first, Mr. Bogdanow mostly did residential interiors, and his ideas carried over into his design work for restaurants, where he put a premium on natural flow, comfort and a relaxed atmosphere.
“His hallmarks were beautifully crafted light fixtures with unusual metal finishes and wood detailing that felt uniquely American and urban,” Mr. Rockwell said. “He used a lot of copper and metals that developed a patina with age. You could say the same for his restaurants.”
He quickly developed a reputation as a designer who could work miracles with small budgets. In an interview with the authors of “Successful Restaurant Design,” he revealed a couple of his tricks, like using blond Masonite walls and applying a lacquer finish to create a leather effect, as he did at Savoy, an enduring favorite in SoHo, or painting pine floors green and red and then waxing them, letting the paint chip over time to produce a multicolored look.
At Mr. Meer’s restaurant City Hall, in a landmarked mid-19th-century building on Duane Street with cast-iron columns, he combined what had been two restaurants into one large dining room of 10,000 square feet, with light pear-wood tables, curved booths and a period feel accentuated by historic photos of New York.
“If you crossed the ‘21’ Club with Balthazar and threw in a bit of the Oyster Bar, you would end up with something like City Hall,” Ruth Reichl wrote in her review of the restaurant in The New York Times in 1999. “No wonder everybody likes the place so much.”
Mr. Bogdanow’s other projects included the atrium and the screening room at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel and, outside New York, Rubicon in San Francisco and Caliterra in Chicago.
He is survived by his wife, the documentary filmmaker Deborah Shaffer; a daughter, Maya; a sister, Barbara Lavi of Weston, Conn.; and a brother, Michael, of Boston.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bogdanow
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/dining/larry-bogdanow-architect-dies-at-64.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=6327E78885D78D03D0FA6BF7778C6929&gwt=pay
Larry Bogdanow, an architect whose love for natural materials and fine craftsmanship brought a sense of warmth and ease to the interiors of dozens of Manhattan’s most popular restaurants, including Union Square Café, Savoy and the Cub Room, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 64.
The cause was a brain tumor, Daniel Kohs, a partner in Mr. Bogdanow’s architectural firm, said.
Mr. Bogdanow (pronounced BOG-duh-now), the founder and an owner of Bogdanow Partners Architects, brought a contemporary Arts and Crafts sensibility to restaurant design, using rich colors and woods like cherry, pear and pecan to create an atmosphere of relaxed luxury, usually in restaurants that were intimate in scale and run by owner-chefs rather than large companies.
At his country home in Chatham, N.Y., he was a part-time farmer and an enthusiast of the ecologically oriented, traditionalist slow food movement, a sideline that put him on the same wavelength as many of the chefs and restaurateurs he worked with.
Mr. Bogdanow’s first important restaurant design job was for Union Square Café, owned by Danny Meyer, in the mid-1980s. In his book “Setting the Table,” Mr. Meyer recalled asking Mr. Bogdanow and his colleague Warren Ashworth to create a restaurant “that looked as if no architect had ever been there,” one that was “easy, comfortable and timeless.”
Those three adjectives were magic words for Mr. Bogdanow, who responded with an airy interior, elegant but casual, with cherry-wood floors and green wainscoting, that realized Mr. Meyer’s somewhat paradoxical concept of an American trattoria.
Mr. Bogdanow went on to design a number of restaurants notable for their resistance to design trends and respect for architectural history, including the Cub Room in SoHo and City Hall in TriBeCa for their chef and owner, Henry Meer; Union Pacific and Beppe in the Flatiron district; and, for the chef and owner Bill Telepan, Telepan on the Upper West Side.
One of his most enticing and intimate restaurants, Wild Blue, opened on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in 1999 and was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“His interest in urban craftsmanship, evident in restaurants like Union Square Café and the Cub Room, really anticipated the industrial urban aesthetic that’s prevalent right now, although he was more fabric and wood than metal and glass,” the designer David Rockwell said. “He created iconic projects, but he always designed from the details out — the light-fixture level.”
Lawrence Bailey Bogdanow was born on Feb. 24, 1947, in Houston. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 1970, he moved to New York and settled in SoHo when the neighborhood was being colonized by artists.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1977 and worked briefly as an architectural designer for Beyer Blinder Belle, an architectural firm specializing in historic preservation. In 1978 he founded his own firm, New City Designs, which evolved into Bogdanow Partners Architects.
At first, Mr. Bogdanow mostly did residential interiors, and his ideas carried over into his design work for restaurants, where he put a premium on natural flow, comfort and a relaxed atmosphere.
“His hallmarks were beautifully crafted light fixtures with unusual metal finishes and wood detailing that felt uniquely American and urban,” Mr. Rockwell said. “He used a lot of copper and metals that developed a patina with age. You could say the same for his restaurants.”
He quickly developed a reputation as a designer who could work miracles with small budgets. In an interview with the authors of “Successful Restaurant Design,” he revealed a couple of his tricks, like using blond Masonite walls and applying a lacquer finish to create a leather effect, as he did at Savoy, an enduring favorite in SoHo, or painting pine floors green and red and then waxing them, letting the paint chip over time to produce a multicolored look.
At Mr. Meer’s restaurant City Hall, in a landmarked mid-19th-century building on Duane Street with cast-iron columns, he combined what had been two restaurants into one large dining room of 10,000 square feet, with light pear-wood tables, curved booths and a period feel accentuated by historic photos of New York.
“If you crossed the ‘21’ Club with Balthazar and threw in a bit of the Oyster Bar, you would end up with something like City Hall,” Ruth Reichl wrote in her review of the restaurant in The New York Times in 1999. “No wonder everybody likes the place so much.”
Mr. Bogdanow’s other projects included the atrium and the screening room at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel and, outside New York, Rubicon in San Francisco and Caliterra in Chicago.
He is survived by his wife, the documentary filmmaker Deborah Shaffer; a daughter, Maya; a sister, Barbara Lavi of Weston, Conn.; and a brother, Michael, of Boston.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bogdanow
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/dining/larry-bogdanow-architect-dies-at-64.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=6327E78885D78D03D0FA6BF7778C6929&gwt=pay
The cause was a brain tumor, Daniel Kohs, a partner in Mr. Bogdanow’s architectural firm, said.
Mr. Bogdanow (pronounced BOG-duh-now), the founder and an owner of Bogdanow Partners Architects, brought a contemporary Arts and Crafts sensibility to restaurant design, using rich colors and woods like cherry, pear and pecan to create an atmosphere of relaxed luxury, usually in restaurants that were intimate in scale and run by owner-chefs rather than large companies.
At his country home in Chatham, N.Y., he was a part-time farmer and an enthusiast of the ecologically oriented, traditionalist slow food movement, a sideline that put him on the same wavelength as many of the chefs and restaurateurs he worked with.
Mr. Bogdanow’s first important restaurant design job was for Union Square Café, owned by Danny Meyer, in the mid-1980s. In his book “Setting the Table,” Mr. Meyer recalled asking Mr. Bogdanow and his colleague Warren Ashworth to create a restaurant “that looked as if no architect had ever been there,” one that was “easy, comfortable and timeless.”
Those three adjectives were magic words for Mr. Bogdanow, who responded with an airy interior, elegant but casual, with cherry-wood floors and green wainscoting, that realized Mr. Meyer’s somewhat paradoxical concept of an American trattoria.
Mr. Bogdanow went on to design a number of restaurants notable for their resistance to design trends and respect for architectural history, including the Cub Room in SoHo and City Hall in TriBeCa for their chef and owner, Henry Meer; Union Pacific and Beppe in the Flatiron district; and, for the chef and owner Bill Telepan, Telepan on the Upper West Side.
One of his most enticing and intimate restaurants, Wild Blue, opened on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center in 1999 and was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001.
“His interest in urban craftsmanship, evident in restaurants like Union Square Café and the Cub Room, really anticipated the industrial urban aesthetic that’s prevalent right now, although he was more fabric and wood than metal and glass,” the designer David Rockwell said. “He created iconic projects, but he always designed from the details out — the light-fixture level.”
Lawrence Bailey Bogdanow was born on Feb. 24, 1947, in Houston. After graduating from Washington University in St. Louis in 1970, he moved to New York and settled in SoHo when the neighborhood was being colonized by artists.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1977 and worked briefly as an architectural designer for Beyer Blinder Belle, an architectural firm specializing in historic preservation. In 1978 he founded his own firm, New City Designs, which evolved into Bogdanow Partners Architects.
At first, Mr. Bogdanow mostly did residential interiors, and his ideas carried over into his design work for restaurants, where he put a premium on natural flow, comfort and a relaxed atmosphere.
“His hallmarks were beautifully crafted light fixtures with unusual metal finishes and wood detailing that felt uniquely American and urban,” Mr. Rockwell said. “He used a lot of copper and metals that developed a patina with age. You could say the same for his restaurants.”
He quickly developed a reputation as a designer who could work miracles with small budgets. In an interview with the authors of “Successful Restaurant Design,” he revealed a couple of his tricks, like using blond Masonite walls and applying a lacquer finish to create a leather effect, as he did at Savoy, an enduring favorite in SoHo, or painting pine floors green and red and then waxing them, letting the paint chip over time to produce a multicolored look.
At Mr. Meer’s restaurant City Hall, in a landmarked mid-19th-century building on Duane Street with cast-iron columns, he combined what had been two restaurants into one large dining room of 10,000 square feet, with light pear-wood tables, curved booths and a period feel accentuated by historic photos of New York.
“If you crossed the ‘21’ Club with Balthazar and threw in a bit of the Oyster Bar, you would end up with something like City Hall,” Ruth Reichl wrote in her review of the restaurant in The New York Times in 1999. “No wonder everybody likes the place so much.”
Mr. Bogdanow’s other projects included the atrium and the screening room at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel and, outside New York, Rubicon in San Francisco and Caliterra in Chicago.
He is survived by his wife, the documentary filmmaker Deborah Shaffer; a daughter, Maya; a sister, Barbara Lavi of Weston, Conn.; and a brother, Michael, of Boston.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bogdanow
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/dining/larry-bogdanow-architect-dies-at-64.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=6327E78885D78D03D0FA6BF7778C6929&gwt=pay
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Records on Ancestry
Advertisement
