The Magic Curtains

Customers raising a glass at the bar in The Four Seasons may think they’ve had one too many when they notice the gentle undulations of the curtains covering the towering windows. But what they are witnessing is one of the bar’s unique charms—a phenomenon that appeared as if by magic.

When the restaurant was taking shape in the late 1950s, the windows (which are 18 to 22 feet high) posed a serious challenge. Fabric curtains would fade and wear in the bright sunlight streaming in from the street. An artisan came up with the solution: curtains made of anodized aluminum beads.

The artisan was Marie Nichols, who fashioned the curtains by turning millions of beads into chains. The finished curtains were matchless—but on the day they were installed the workmen noticed something very odd, even worrisome. They quickly placed a call to Philip Johnson, the architect in charge, who arrived to find the bronze-hued draperies rippling from top to bottom.

Mystified, Johnson thought the movement must have been caused by air currents, or perhaps the trains rumbling beneath Lexington Avenue. In any event, he knew a phone call to Joe Baum of Restaurant Associates was in order. On viewing the spectacle, Baum declared it “beautiful.” Johnson, too, came to love the mysterious rippling—caused, he mused, simply by “the shock of New York.” Today, neither those who first saw the “magic curtains” nor the countless people who have since wined and dined in their shadow could imagine the elegant Pool and Grill Rooms without them.