People's

People's runs three rooms in the garden level of the townhouse where Edith Halpert ran the Downtown Gallery from 1926. You get a table by referral.2 1

Why go

Halpert was born in Odessa in 1900 and became New York's first female gallery owner. Out of this building she showed Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove and Jacob Lawrence, and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller bought from her.2 Ryan Mahoney of Workstead built the bar around her. The front parlor is behind a velvet curtain and keeps the original fireplace. The middle lounge is plum velvet under bronze, with a DJ booth in it. The back gallery sits under a greenhouse skylight.2

Margot Hauer-King and Emmet McDermott opened it in December 2024, two years after taking a derelict townhouse nobody else wanted.1 She grew up in her father Jeremy King's London dining rooms, which is why the argument here is about service.2

I haven't found a review of the drinking here. Ruth Rogers has it on her list for next time and says herself she has not been.4

Order this / avoid

Order: a martini at the back bar. There is one named for Rockefeller, and the bar itself was built out of an antique French bookshelf.2
Order: the tuna toasts with it. Caviar is the other thing that comes out at that counter.2
Avoid: taking pictures. Small bronze plaques around the rooms say not to.2

What locals & experts say

Emmet McDermott, to Kristen Tauer at WWD, on the townhouse before they started: When we found it, it felt like the rotted insides of a pirate ship.1
Margot Hauer-King, in Wallpaper, quoting her father on what a bar is actually for:* even if your martinis are freezing, people won't come back to a place if they aren't made to feel valued.2
Ruth Rogers of the River Cafe names it among the rooms she wants to get to in New York, and flags that she is going on what she has seen.4

Good to know

Booking: by referral. The founders opened to the public and sold no memberships. A table still comes through somebody who knows the room.1
Dress: the house publishes a code and says it holds to it.3
The art rotates, which is the gallery half of the idea.3

Verdict

could-visit — Margot Hauer-King learned service at her father's tables and has bet the whole room on it. That is what to judge People's by, once somebody gets you in.

People's.