What Is Future of Local Landmark?

 by Ronald Drenger

A steady stream of customers arrived at Teddy’s for happy hour on Friday evening, Jan. 9. Having heard from news reports that the restaurant was closing the next night, they were coming for one last margarita. But the City Marshall had gotten there first and Teddy’s, the iconic Tribeca locale made famous by its rooftop Statue of Liberty crown and funky facade, was closed for good.

Teddy’s as it appeared when celebrities and alleged mobsters frequented the restaurant. Photo: Dennis Dollens

“We missed it!” a man shouted to his friends. “The party’s over.”

Teddy’s is closed, but the fate of the building and its crown remain uncertain. Steven Elghanyan, the owner of the building at 217-219 West Broadway, told the Trib that he may lease to another restaurant or he may tear down the structure and put up a residential building—a plan he seemed set on a couple of years ago before extending Teddy’s lease for another 10 years. “I’m exploring my options,” Elghanyan said. But, he added, “If the building stays, the crown stays.”

Elghanyan said that Teddy’s owner, Christopher Chesnutt, owed more than $100,000 in back rent. “He dragged me along for a long time,” Elghanyan said.

Chesnutt said his business never recovered after Sept. 11, but declined to comment further on the restaurant’s financial troubles.

“That’s the long and short of it—not enough people came to eat anymore,” said Chesnutt, a Tribeca resident, who last fall opened Alta, a restaurant on West 10th Street. “The community is losing an institution that the community did not support.”

If another restaurant does not take its place, the demise of Teddy’s will end a long and colorful history of dining and drinking at the site, stretching back to early last century.

From the 1920s until 1945 Teddy Bartel ran the original Teddy’s, a German eatery. He sold the place to Sal Cucinotta, who turned it into an Italian restaurant.

“First we were discovered by some people from uptown,” Cucinotta recalled in a 1985 interview, and Teddy’s “became a hideaway, where they would come with their girlfriends, because nobody uptown knew about it. People never came below 14th Street after it was dark.”

That changed in the 1950s and ’60s as the socially connected and press- savvy Cucinotta transformed his restaurant into a celebrity den that attracted the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Groucho Marx, Kirk Douglas and Sophia Loren.

Cucinotta sold Teddy’s—but kept ownership of the building—in 1979. The new operators couldn’t sustain its success and Cucinotta bought it back, then sold it again. But the restaurant had lost its magic.

A Barcelona chef named Montse Guillen and her partner, artist Antoni Miralda, brought a new spark to the place in 1984. Changing the name to

Artist Antoni Miralda transformed the facade and changed the restaurant’s name in the mid-1980s. Photo: Peter Aaron/Esto
El Internacional, they created a Spanish restaurant and tapas bar—and an art project. Miralda added the 2,500-pound, 40-foot-wide crown, filled the interior with art, painted the facade a black-and-white giraffe-like pattern and embedded crushed soda cans in the sidewalk. The couple held events that were part feast, part performance art.

They also ignited a community controversy, with some neighbors complaining about noise, food odors, and the gigantic crown.

Christopher Chesnutt in front of his now-closed restaurant in 1999. Photo: Carl Glassman

But El Internacional was a short-lived sensation, as Miralda and Guillen moved on in 1986. Chesnutt took over in 1989, switching to Mexican food, adding his own quirky aesthetic touches, including the stained-glass canopy, and bringing back the Teddy’s name (officially he called his place El Teddy’s, combining its two previous names).

In its heyday Teddy’s drew big crowds. For years it appeared in the opening credits of “Saturday Night Live” and it gained a reputation for serving one of the best margaritas in town.

Elghanyan bought the building from Cucinotta in 1999 and sparked debate when he applied to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to replace the structure, which

is in the Tribeca East Historic District, with a six-story residential building. Some preservationists and Downtown residents urged the Commission to reject the request and designate the Teddy’s building a city landmark, but in October 2001 the new building was approved.

Teddy’s got a reprieve when Elghanyan abandoned his plans. Now, with the restaurant gone, the building’s future is in limbo again.

If it is to be demolished, Miralda and Guillen, now living in Miami, want to save the crown. “It would be fantastic to bring it to Miami,” Guillen said during a phone interview.

Miralda envisions the crown serving as a centerpiece for an exhibition about Teddy’s, in all its incarnations, and El Internacional. “It could describe a little slice of history in New York,” he said. “ A small spot like that created so much energy.”