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      Sardi’s Is Back After 648 Days, Its Fortunes Tied to Broadway

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      The caricatures are back up. But many shows are canceling performances just as Sardi’s reopens, a hurdle for a restaurant catering to the theater crowd.It felt sort of like old times, the other night at Sardi’s.Joe Petrsoric, back in his familiar red jacket, was lining up martini glasses at the second floor bar where he has worked since arriving from Yugoslavia in 1972. Manning the front door, his traditional dark suit now accessorized with a face mask, was Max Klimavicius, who started working in the kitchen in 1974 after immigrating from Colombia; he now runs the place.It had been 648 days since Sardi’s, a watering hole so closely entwined with Broadway that it was name-checked in the Rodgers and Hart song “The Lady Is a Tramp,” last served its cannelloni au gratin. And now, on the long night of the winter solstice, the oft-imperiled Main Stem mainstay with caricature-covered walls was ready to try again.The timing is nerve-racking. The Omicron variant is rampaging through New York City, wreaking havoc in the theater industry.There were 33 Broadway shows scheduled to perform Dec. 21, which Mr. Klimavicius chose for a soft reopening with limited hours, a limited menu and reduced capacity. But so many actors and crew members are now testing positive for the coronavirus that only 18 shows actually took the stage that night, and one of those made it to curtain only because the playwright grabbed a script and went on to replace an ailing performer.“The place has to live,” said Mr. Klimavicius, who greeted customers like the long-lost friends many of them were, but also helped make sure they had proof of vaccination. “It’s part of the fabric.”The restaurant is a combination of Broadway commissary and tourist magnet. As it reopened, the producer Arthur Whitelaw, who still remembers a childhood visit to Sardi’s more than seven decades ago (his parents were taking him to a new musical called “Oklahoma!”), settled into a cozy corner from which he could survey the room. A few tables away sat four friends from The Villages, the fast-growing retirement community in Florida, who were in town to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” on their annual Broadway trip.The restaurant’s owners did a substantial rehabilitation of the four-story eatery this year, but are hoping no one will notice, because Sardi’s customers are tradition-bound.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe work was made possible in part by help from the Shubert Organization, which owns the building, and in part with a large grant from a federal government program designed to provide emergency assistance to restaurants and bars affected by the pandemic. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway is a small town, but a big business — in 2018-2019, the last full season before the pandemic, 14.8 million people saw a show, spending $1.8 billion on tickets. Many of those patrons also spent money at hotels, shops, and at restaurants like Sardi’s — a symbiotic, and symbolic, economic relationship that is essential to Times Square and the city at large.“Sardi’s is a symbol of Broadway and the Broadway scene, and it’s been closed for far too long,” said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance, which represents a theater-dependent neighborhood that occupies 0.1 percent of the city’s land mass, but contributes 15 percent of its economic output. With New York’s business districts threatened by remote work, and its brick-and-mortar stores by e-commerce, in-person experiences like live theater and dining are more important than ever.Times Square is still in recovery mode. “Office workers are coming back slower than anyone would have expected or wanted — occupancies are about 30 percent — and about 77 percent of businesses are open,” Mr. Harris said. “We still have a ways to go.”Sardi’s, which has been operating on West 44th Street since 1927, employed nearly 130 people during peak seasons before the pandemic arrived; it’s restarting with 58.The restaurant has weathered its share of challenges — booms, busts, and bankruptcy. It has been popular and it has been passé, but it has always been there, known more for its caricatures than its cuisine, drawing a mix of industry insiders and theater-loving visitors to eat, drink, kibitz and commiserate.It was established by Vincent Sardi Sr., who in 1947, at the very first Tony Awards, won a special prize “for providing a transient home and comfort station for theater folk.” Mr. Klimavicius is now the majority owner.Sardi’s has about 1,200 caricatures of famous people who have eaten in the restaurant, most of whom are connected to the theater industry. About 900 are on display at any given time. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe original caricature of Barbra Streisand was stolen, so now her image is the only one screwed into the wall, keeping watch over the empty dining room throughout the shutdown.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHabitués understand the risks now faced not only by Sardi’s, but by the industry, the neighborhood, and the city.“We haven’t proven that the pandemic is over, and that everything is not going to fail,” said Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, who likes to transact business at the upstairs bar while shows are running and the room is quiet. “But then, I grew up in California where the ground shook all the time and you never knew if your whole house was going to collapse on you, so I see it differently.”Sardi’s began the pandemic, appropriately, with a moment of high drama: On March 12, 2020, just moments after agreeing to shut down all 41 theaters, a group of Broadway bigwigs gathered at the bar to drown their sorrows. They ate, they drank, they hugged. Then many of them got the coronavirus.Among the industry gatekeepers who fell ill — with, to be sure, no way of knowing how — was Robert E. Wankel, the chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization, which has 17 Broadway theaters, and which is the restaurant’s landlord. On Tuesday, Mr. Wankel was there again, happily holding court over a vodka tonic and relentlessly bullish on Sardi’s, where he has been coming for 50 years, and lunches three times a week.“Sardi’s is going to do very well,” he said, “now that the theater is back.”Max Klimavicius, who grew up in Colombia, started working at Sardi’s in 1974 as an expediter in the kitchen. Now he owns the place.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAmong the restaurant’s most longstanding patrons: Arthur Whitelaw, a producer whose parents first brought him to Sardi’s in the 1940s. On the first night back, Whitelaw had a pre-theater dinner with his producing partner, Ruby Persson.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSardi’s has been a part of Broadway longer than some theaters, and has become part of the industry’s lore. As a line in “The Lady is a Tramp” has it: “The food at Sardi’s is perfect, no doubt / I wouldn’t know what the Ritz is about.” Alice Childress mentions it in her play, “Trouble in Mind,” now being staged on Broadway, while in the musical “The Producers,” Mel Brooks has a would-be showman dream of “lunch at Sardi’s every day.”Over the years, the restaurant has hosted luminaries from Eleanor Roosevelt to Ethel Merman, scads of Tony winners, Oscar winners and even, once a year, the dog that wins the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. “I went there with Elizabeth Taylor, for God’s sake,” said Charlotte Moore, the artistic director of Irish Repertory Theater.Among its current boldfaced regulars: the designer Michael Kors, who created a Sardi’s-themed cashmere sweater for Bergdorf Goodman (selling for $990).“When I walk into Sardi’s I feel like I’m living in ‘All About Eve’,” he said. “I know Times Square needs to come back, and I know Sardi’s needs to come back.”Joe Petrsoric has been working the bar at Sardi’s since 1972. “What am I going to do at home?”, he asked.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlthough the dining room and bar will look quite familiar to Sardi’s regulars — polished but unchanged — the kitchen was completely overhauled in order to modernize it, and some equipment has yet to arrive because of supply chain woes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSardi’s is among the last Broadway institutions to resume operations.Since June, 39 Broadway shows have begun performances, the TKTS booth is once again selling discounted tickets, and other industry watering holes, like Joe Allen and Bar Centrale, have long since reopened.But for months Sardi’s remained shuttered, with an eerie menu in the window still listing the specials for March 13, 2020: a tasting of five cheeses, meatballs over bucatini, sautéed sea scallops.Early in the pandemic, Mr. Klimavicius, like many, had his doubts — theater was dark, Midtown was dead, everything seemed uncertain. But this June, buoyed by $4.5 million from the federal government’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund, he began overhauling the space — redoing the kitchen, the gas lines, the ventilation, and the wiring, among other things — hoping to modernize it in a way that no one would notice. People who love Sardi’s are, to put it mildly, change-averse.“I was concerned when I heard ‘renovation’,” said Andrea Ezagui, a Sardi’s regular from Long Island, who showed up at 4 p.m. — the moment it reopened — and immediately repaired to the bar upstairs, where she celebrated with champagne and friends. “They kept it the way it should be,” she said, “a little piece of heaven on Broadway.”The restaurant’s famous caricatures came off their picture ledges for the restoration — all but one, that is. Barbra Streisand has the only caricature screwed to the wall, because fans stole the original; so now she remains, irremovable, with her admonition “Don’t steal this one” inscribed above her signature.On a recent afternoon, Mr. Klimavicius and his crew set about putting the hundreds of caricatures back up, starting with one of Lin-Manuel Miranda, “a good friend of the house.”As he settled into his domain on the second floor, Mr. Petrsoric, the bartender, was clearly relieved to be back on the job, after spending too many months in Mamaroneck, N.Y., riding a stationary bike and, by his own account, going crazy. “What am I going to do at home?” he said. “I love people. And think about 50 years behind the bar. You know how many people I know?”He started by mixing a Belvedere martini, a cosmopolitan and a lemon drop. “This is unbelievable,” he marveled. “But you know, it takes me one hour, and you’re back to normal.” More

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      La Grenouille NYC: Classic Cuisine and the Owner’s Lusty Crooning

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      Around 9:15 on a recent Wednesday evening, the mood in the full but otherwise serene dining room of La Grenouille suddenly shifted.The lights brightened. A small band began to play loudly. Out of the kitchen emerged a man in sunglasses, sporting a Cheshire cat grin and hips that swayed like a palm tree in a storm. He burst into a rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon,” in a voice that combined the boom of a sportscaster with the swagger of an Elvis impersonator. For almost half an hour, he strutted around this French restaurant known for its towering floral displays and airy soufflés, perching on diners’ tables and even growling like a cat.Who was this brassy balladeer? None other than the restaurant’s majority owner, Philippe Masson.Some guests cheered. Others took photos. As Mr. Masson, 60, told how he once romanced Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a woman could be heard saying, “This is the last dying gasp of the patriarchy.”Mr. Masson and his house band perform the Gershwin tune “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesLa Grenouille, just off Fifth Avenue on East 52nd Street, is among the last old-school French restaurants left in New York City, a contemporary of lost gustatory temples like Lutèce, La Caravelle and La Côte Basque. Much of its reputation has rested on how little it changed during nearly 60 years in business.So the restaurant’s transformation into a raucous late-night jazz lounge has been jarring to some diners, thrilling to many others and surprising to almost everybody. (The performances, which take place on all four nights the restaurant is open each week, aren’t mentioned when you make a reservation online, though they are noted on the La Grenouille website.)“It was definitely like a caricature of Frank Sinatra,” said Caroline Askew, 37, a creative director of a Manhattan design studio, who ate at La Grenouille in July. “But it was fun. I don’t know, I think we needed that sense of humor.”It was one of the first times she’d dined indoors since the pandemic began. “It felt like, OK, this is why I live here,” she said. “I love the old New York-y characters.”To Mr. Masson, who has no formal musical training and who broke into song four times during a half-hour interview for this article, the musical gig feels like a fulfillment of a lifelong destiny. “I seem to move people — I can’t explain it,” he said.Some have been moved in less desirable ways.“It ruined the entire ambience and tenor of the evening,” said Carrie Cort, 77, who lives in Washington, D.C., and has been going to La Grenouille for 28 years. She and her husband recently celebrated his 80th birthday there, and felt the performance was more a disturbance than a delight. “If he wants to open up a nightclub, good, but that’s not what La Grenouille is.”Many guests are excited about the live music, the first in the restaurant’s nearly 60-year history. Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesLa Grenouille has been a Midtown oasis of tradition and tranquillity since Gisèle Masson and her husband, Charles Masson Sr., opened it in 1962. But the restaurant has also kicked up some public drama. In 2014, their son Charles Masson Jr. stepped down from his longtime role as general manager amid a bitter, longstanding dispute with Philippe, his younger brother, who then took over. (Asked for comment about the new musical act, Charles Masson Jr. said, “As much as I may have an opinion, I’d rather keep it to myself.”)Philippe Masson started performing casually for outdoor diners at La Grenouille in July 2020, as a tribute to the restaurant’s captain Bertrand Marteville, who had died of Covid-19. When indoor dining resumed two months later, Mr. Masson removed some tables and replaced them with a stage. He hired four jazz musicians and named them the Buster Frog Quartet, a nod to the restaurant’s name, which means “the frog.”Mr. Masson learned songs like “La Vie En Rose” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” The goal, he said, was to “bring back life to the city.”He soon realized that he had unlocked a passion. “People are saying, ‘Never mind the food or flowers — we are coming here to hear you sing, Philippe.’”Between sets of about 30 minutes, Mr. Masson still runs the kitchen, oversees the dining room and creates the restaurant’s signature flower arrangements. “Music is energizing,” he said. “It picks me up.”Mr. Masson started performing to honor an employee who died from Covid-19, and found a new passion in the process.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesHe knows that not everyone appreciates his act. “One out of 100 say, ‘Oh, Philippe, this is not La Grenouille,’” he said. “I say, it is fitting for me and it is fitting for most.”It’s good for business, too, he said. “In the past we didn’t have a third seating. I could give food away and it wouldn’t happen. Now we have something to create more income for that elusive late-night seating.” (A French singer, Naïma Pöhler, also performs three nights a week, and the singers Lucy Wijnands and Ashley Pezzotti take the stage on Saturdays.)The music has attracted a younger clientele. Liana Khatri, 30, worried that the restaurant would be too stuffy when she visited in August — until Mr. Masson came onstage. “You didn’t care if the guy’s voice was good,” she said. “That was not the point. It was more the experience.”“There are so many trendy restaurants in New York City,” she added. “There is something to be said for a place that is not trying to be cool.”Eventually, Mr. Masson wants to turn the private dining room upstairs into a jazz lounge, where he will keep performing.And what of the employees who hear his crooning night after night? One busboy simply shrugged and said, “You get used to it.”Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      Moving to the Theater District and Finding His Community

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      A musical theater educator and audition coach discovers how great it can be to live across the street from “Wicked.”Peace and quiet don’t come easy in Midtown, but Alexander Tom has managed to find it across the street from the Gershwin Theater’s wicked witches.Mr. Tom, 29, is the associate program head of the musical theater program at Pace University in Manhattan; he also moonlights as an audition coach, working out of his apartment and local studios.Moving from his previous apartment in Harlem to one of the city’s busiest neighborhoods this May has, for him, meant surrounding himself not just with theater, but with his community: He’ll often leave his home and see a friend dipping into a theater for rehearsal. West 51st Street can feel, at times, less like a two-way thoroughfare and more like a small town. Moving before rental prices started to rebound from the pandemic slump turned out to be the right move for Mr. Tom.Mr. Tom prefers to decorate his apartment with abstract art, which gives him a “creative mind break” while he’s working at his desk or piano.  Katherine Marks for The New York Times“It’s quiet, but it feels like I can make it as loud as I want,” Mr. Tom said of his one-bedroom apartment. His biggest pandemic purchase was a Kawai piano, which he can play with gusto thanks to his building’s prewar walls. In fact, his next-door neighbor plays the piano too — they could duet, if only they could hear each other.“I don’t hear the hustle and bustle of Midtown,” he said, “but I can walk outside and be just where I want to be.”$2,025 | Midtown WestAlexander Tom, 29Occupation: Associate program head of the musical theater program at Pace University in Manhattan.Favorite local coffee shop: “Bibble and Sip is an AAPI-owned coffee shop, with a llama as their mascot,” Mr. Tom said. “They’ve got great cream puffs, the coffee is great — I love me my Bibble.”The show you need to see right now: Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s “Pass Over.” “The writer does an amazing job of having a conversation onstage, but also provoking the audience to have the conversation with themselves,” he said.Earlier this year, while living in a studio on 125th and Broadway, Mr. Tom found himself itching for more space. The studio was so small that it had taken him months to properly arrange all his furniture in a way that felt livable. He had plans to spend two months this summer in South Carolina, to work on a student production of “Hello, Dolly!” and he worried that rents would increase significantly by the time he returned to the city.Moving downtown was a top priority. The commute from Harlem to Pace’s campus in the financial district — which could take up to an hour and a half, depending on the whim of the M.T.A. — had begun to put a strain on Mr. Tom. Many of his workdays began with 9 a.m. classes and ended with rehearsals that went late into the night, meaning that he would arrive home after midnight and need to be up at 5 a.m. to start all over again. “I’m young and sprightly,” he said, “but I’m not that young, and I’m not that sprightly.”Mr. Tom is still waiting on the marble-topped kitchen island he has ordered, which will double as a dining table. “At a certain point I just said: Ikea is cute, Amazon is cute, but I do need to get real human furniture,” he said.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesThe commute would need to shorten. So he set his eyes on an apartment below 72nd Street and above 14th, looking primarily at apartments in Hell’s Kitchen and Midtown West, or near Lincoln Square. In Harlem, he had become accustomed to certain amenities that he knew he wouldn’t want to part with, namely a dishwasher and a gas stove, which helped narrow down his options. (He loves to bake and regularly makes fresh pasta by hand.)He ultimately found a one-bedroom apartment on 51st street in the heart of the Theater District, with laundry in the building and a small but well-appointed kitchen. The part-time doorman was a bonus, and he was thrilled to be across the street from the Gershwin, where he has plans to see “Wicked,” his favorite musical, for the eighteenth time. It’ll be a celebration of his birthday in early September, but also his first musical post-Covid, and a return to the second musical he ever saw as a child growing up in Arizona.His new living room is about the size of his old apartment, and filled with light despite the density of the neighborhood, which has allowed him to develop his plant-rearing skills. “I’m no longer an over-waterer,” he said with cautious pride. “Some of the plants are thriving, but with some of them, I’m unsure if they’re the angry middle child or just don’t want to exist.”The ample light in his apartment has allowed Mr. Tom to develop his skills as a plant owner. Next, he hopes to buy a larger tree or monstera for his living room.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesWith an influx of plants and an upgraded couch, Mr. Tom has been careful not to crowd his apartment with too many plants, given the importance of acoustics to both his personal piano practice and his work as a coach. When a room includes more things that sound can bounce off, the sound fades more quickly. In his relatively spare living room, he said, “I can play music, and I feel like I’m immersed in the music.”The one piece of art hanging in the room is a large abstract piece that Mr. Tom commissioned from the painter Ariel Messeca, who is a friend. A trio of abstract paintings from Joseph Dermody, a Connecticut-based artist, hang in his bedroom. Abstraction appeals to Mr. Tom: “I sit at my desk and my piano a lot,” he said, “and I like to look at something that doesn’t have a prescribed meaning to it, so I can give myself a creative mind break.”Beyond the ample space and saner commute, this new apartment has allowed Mr. Tom a better work-life balance even when he works in the neighborhood. The location has allowed him to take freelance coaching jobs he would have previously turned down for commuting reasons. Now, when he gets a break for lunch and dinner, he can go home to recharge.For those in the theater industry, “the pandemic forced us to ask: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if the industry was better to us?’ And I think part of that is making sure you can advocate for yourself, and take care of yourself,” Mr. Tom said. “Being around theater is great because I can step into it, but also step out of it for a moment when I need to.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      Foo Fighters Bring Rock Back to Madison Square Garden

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      Over the weekend, Foo Fighters played Madison Square Garden, the first full-capacity concert in a New York arena since March of 2020.The house lights inside Madison Square Garden went down Sunday night, and the thousands of fans, packed like sardines in their seats, stood as if on cue. As they roared their approval, bouncing in place on the balls of their feet, the ground began to tremble. Cellphone flash lights illuminated the darkness.The sound of a keyboard echoed through the rafters. Dave Grohl, the Foo Fighters’ frontman, appeared on the stage.“It’s times like these, you learn to live again,” Grohl sang.The lyrics had seldom felt so on point.After many difficult months of illness, death, hardship and pain, and shifting limits on how many people could gather, especially indoors, arena rock returned to New York City just over a year after the city was the center of the outbreak. It was the Garden’s first concert in more than 460 days, and it drew a full-capacity crowd that was asked to show proof of vaccination to enter. Inside, people grooved, tightly packed, with few masks visible.Jaclyn Mitgang, left, and Heather Morris, at the Garden’s first concert since the pandemic. “This is a book end to what we have gone through for a year and a half,” Morris said.Nathan Bajar for The New York Times“This is a book end to what we have gone through for a year and a half,” said Heather Morris, 47, of Chicago. “We’ve survived it. We’re going forward.”The return of concerts to the garden comes at an in-between moment when it comes to the pandemic in the United States. As more and more Americans have become vaccinated against the coronavirus, deaths from Covid have fallen off considerably. But only about two-thirds of adults in the United States have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, and there are still parts of the country where vaccinations lag.But after a year of being stuck inside, people have been eager to restart their hobbies and routines and to connect with one another again. Last week, both New York and California, where more than 70 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, lifted virtually all coronavirus restrictions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask. The rapidly shifting rules allowed the Foo Fighters concert to go forward.Fans were asked to show proof of vaccination to enter the arena.Nathan Bajar for The New York TimesOn Sunday, a concert attendee would have had to squint to see signs of the pandemic persisting. In many ways, the evening felt like prepandemic times.In a sea of thousands, only a few patrons here or there wore face coverings. Thousands of vaccinated people, their faces bare, belted out the lyrics to well-known songs, sending aerosols flying through the air. No one seemed concerned.Fans were packed together. A sudden arm gesture could send a beer flying. Strangers hugged and high-fived. They bumped into each other in the busy concourse. They punched the air, swung their hair and danced, twisting and swaying at their seats in a state of high-decibel music-induced bliss.It was “just epic,” said Rachael Cain, 51, who was among the first people to arrive at the Garden on Sunday afternoon.But there were subtle reminders of the pandemic everywhere. Hand sanitizer pumps were clamped to the walls, and wipes could be found near any napkin dispenser. Ticketing was digital and concession buying appeared mostly cashless.At the entrances, staff members checked people’s vaccine cards with varying levels of scrutiny. Some asked for identification to match with proof of inoculation, in a slow-moving process. Other checkers simply waved people through as they flashed their passes while walking by. A small anti-vaccine protest on the sidewalk outside drew little attention.Several patrons said that the vaccine requirement helped them feel safe about returning to such a big indoor gathering.“I was expecting it to be a little longer before I came to a concert again,” said Nick Snow, 29, who was among the few fans who wore a mask while inside the arena. “The precautions with the vaccinated only, they help.”Grohl himself took care to acknowledge from the stage the unique milestone he and his band were participating in. At various points during the roughly three-hour show, he asked the crowd rhetorically if they had missed music, and mused about how good it felt to be around thousands of people while playing rock songs. The band sang “My Hero” as a tribute to those who had made the concert possible. And in a surprise cameo to celebrate the occasion, the band brought out the comedian Dave Chappelle to sing a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.”Dave Chappelle made a surprise appearance, singing Radiohead’s “Creep.”Kevin Mazur/Getty Images“Welcome back, New York City!” Chappelle yelled as he exited the stage.The show represented the return of some old, familiar comforts that music lovers may not soon take for granted again. There was call and response; people gesturing wildly to no one in particular; fans screaming the lyrics to songs only to realize their voices were drowned out by the music; and an entire floor section jumping up and down as one wave.“I would get vaccinated 10 times over just to see a live show like this with people,” said Rich Casey, 53, of Massachusetts.Having reached the ground floor of the venue and the echoey plaza that leads to the street, Foo Fighters fans seeking one last communal experience for the night sent up a chant, reveling again in one of the band’s most well-known songs, “Best of You.”OhhhhhhOhhhhhh.Ohhhhhh.Ohhhhhh.Then they erupted in one final cheer and walked out into the New York night. More

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      A Night at a Jazz Speakeasy

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      A Night at the Jazz SpeakeasySinna Nasseri📍Reporting from Midtown ManhattanLast Friday, I received a coveted invitation to the Daddy Rabbit, a clandestine pop-up jazz speakeasy that hops around locations in Manhattan.I watched as a handful of musicians gathered to play in a dark, unmarked room. Here’s what I saw, and heard → More

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      How Lin-Manuel Miranda and Friends Made an Old Bookstore New

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      The century-old Drama Book Shop in Manhattan struggled for years. Then “Hamilton” happened.A sculptural representation of a bookworm — 140 feet of scripts and songbooks, twisted along a steel skeleton — corkscrews across the Drama Book Shop in Manhattan. It starts with ancient Greek texts and, 2,400 volumes later, spills into a pile that includes “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.”This 3,500-pound tribute to theatrical history is the centerpiece of the century-old bookstore’s new location, opening Thursday on West 39th Street.The shop — like so many bookstores around the country — had brushes with death, caused not only by e-commerce but also by fire and flood, before encountering a rent hike it could not withstand, in 2018. The beloved institution, where students, artists, scholars and fans could browse memoirs and bone up for auditions, was in danger of closing.Then came an unexpected rescue. Four men enriched by “Hamilton,” including the musical’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda; its director, Thomas Kail; its lead producer, Jeffrey Seller; and the theater owner, James L. Nederlander, bought the store from its longtime owners. Kail has a particularly close relationship with the shop — 20 years ago, just out of college, he formed a small theater company in its basement. After he teamed up with Miranda, the two worked on “In the Heights” there.“I was not born in a trunk; I was born in the basement of the Drama Book Shop,” Kail said. “All of my early creative conversations and relationships were forged in that shop, and the thought of it not existing was painful. I couldn’t imagine New York City without it, and I didn’t want to imagine New York City without it.”The store’s decorations include replicas of armchairs used in the musical “Hamilton.”Jeenah Moon for The New York Times More