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Artist Julian Schnabel and owner Ian Schrager have transformed the Gramercy Park Hotel’s once-frumpy bar into a chic environ with a palatial, Spanish air. On the red-and-white tile floor, stylish editors catching up between Fashion Weeks and young media assistants (as well as the older businessmen they’ll become) occupy tasseled, namesake-colored velvet chairs while quaffing beers from flutes under a small museum’s worth of artworks. Once you’ve taken in the fifteen-foot goldleaf “Rorschach” print by Warhol and then Schnabel’s 1988 painting Teddy Bear’s Picnic closer to the pool table—his Suddenly Last Summer #2 is well-placed over a gigantic wood-burning fireplace—you’ll observe a similar set of riches at play on the oak-leaf-shaped shelves that tower over each bar and are stocked with aged scotches and exotic liquors such as cachaça and pisco. Apropos of the setting, bartenders wield muddlers and juicers as if performing for royalty—in one instance stirring honey, Jaegermeister, and Glenfiddich into a viscous sweet vermouth martini that’s served in a chilled glass. — Daniel Maurer

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