In the movable party that is New York, there are always new iterations of the glamour spot—from pleasure palace to literary watering hole—where the rich and the prominent, the beautiful and the talented, flock for fun, and everyone else flocks to see (and gossip about) them. We take you back to where it all began, at Delmonico’s, where Mark Twain held forth and Diamond Jim Brady consumed enough to kill a lesser man. From there, we drop in on a century of New Yorkers kicking back in the hottest place to be—at just the moment they were there.
For the full feature with more than twice the number of places and four times the number of photos, pick up a copy of New York magazine.