Beyond a lingering construction wall, through a carefully attended front door, People’s welcomes guests into a sequence of three distinct social spaces—a cozy, candlelit parlor yields to a sumptuous salon, which introduces an elegant art gallery set beneath an angled skylight. The vision of Emmet McDermott and Margot Hauer-King, and designed by the Brooklyn-based studio Workstead, People’s integrates an art salon concept with quarterly shows into a convivial cocktail lounge, alongside culinary contributions from Elizabeth Street Hospitality, the team behind Raf’s and Michelin-starred Musket Room.It’s a dazzling combination—if you’re able to find it.
Both the building and its centrally hidden location inform the final concept, which feels like the marriage of a London members club and an early aughts haunt like the Beatrice Inn. “We stumbled upon this decrepit townhouse in Greenwich Village that had been abandoned for years,” McDermott tells Surface. “When you went inside it was like the rotting interior of a pirate ship, with water dripping everywhere.” There were no floors—only a plank with handrails. “And yet,” he adds, “the first time we walked in, despite all of the chaos, it clicked immediately.”
McDermott and Hauer-King were seeking a location with history, character, and its own story to tell. “The space has this unfolding drama. The rooms get more complex and grander the further you go back,” McDermott says. It took a year and a half to transform—after the ceiling fell in while they were negotiating the lease.
The benefit of spending so much time making the venue architecturally sound was that they could do so with their aesthetic finishes in mind. “There was very little architectural detail left in the space—except for the sky light from 1926,” Ryan Mahoney, a partner and creative director at Workstead, tells Surface, “and even that was cracked and covered in a blue tarp. Emmet and Margot had a vision that began with the experience they wanted to provide.”
It started with a narrative. “We painted for a while in words,” Hauer-King says. “We wrote the story of People’s before we visualized it. We knew that the design should set the stage, not be the performance. We did not want to design something that felt overly dictatorial in terms of ‘this is what it is’ and ‘this is how to use it.’ We wanted to give people an indication, but we wanted to leave it open enough for our patrons to step in and be the performers.”
The team was adamant that every seat in all three spaces be desirable. In the parlor, they wanted patrons to settle into coupled chairs or banquets. By contrast, they wanted the salon to encourage flow and movement. For the gallery, they invoked the fact that the space once housed The Downtown Gallery, founded in 1926 by Edith Halpert. An early champion of American modernism, it had presented work from the likes of Georgia O’Keeffe, Max Weber, and other famed artists.
Their partnership with Elizabeth Street Hospitality grew from their friendship—and a throwaway comment from Hauer-King to owners Jennifer and Nicole Vitagliano, seeking advice about what they should do for food at People’s. “They have a philosophy in their restaurants of simple things done exceptionally well. We wanted to bring that to People’s through our point of view,” Hauer-King says. Their particular take: meet the needs of people coming together just after dinner, who may want a sharable snack with their cocktail like fries or tuna toasties.
Death & Co alum Alex Jump leads People’s beverage program. One of the earliest briefs McDermott and Hauer-King provided was centered around the sound of a champagne cork popping, and the sensations that conjures. Champagne and various martinis factor into the menu, as does a roster of signature drinks, all of which are named after artists that were shown in The Downtown Gallery.
Right now, People’s is accessible through reservation by referral. “You have to know it’s there. It’s tucked away. We’ve intentionally not done signage,” Hauer-King says. Coupled with this, their Instagram is private, and a listing someone else posted on Google has it mislocated. “We want to create the level of thought applied to a dinner party,” she adds of their approach every night. “We aren’t trying to be exclusive just to be exclusive. The whole point is to focus on the people at the core of our community. If people feel like this is theirs, they will keep coming.”
