Mark Grossich, a nightlife impresario who mined a lost era of New York opulence to create the Campbell Apartment at Grand Central Terminal and other upscale cocktail lounges in marquee Manhattan locations, died on Feb. 8 in Manhattan. He was 74.
His death, which was not widely reported at the time, was in a hospital, from complications of Parkinson’s disease, his daughter, Katherine McGehee, confirmed.
As the founder and chief executive of Hospitality Holdings, Mr. Grossich, a former adman, sold not just icy Gibsons and pricey cigars but a retro-tinged vision of the luxe life, starting in the 1990s, when dot-com-era riches had New York’s high rollers indulging in Roaring Twenties style (albeit with legal drinks).
His places were popular among an elite crowd, but not a trendy one. “Usually, trendy means loud and abusive and intense,” Mr. Grossich said in an interview in 1999 with The New York Times, which described him as wearing a custom double-breasted suit, an antique polka-dot pocket square and suede bench-made shoes. “We do not want to be the flavor of the month or the year. We want to be in it for the long run.”
Throughout the 1990s, Mr. Grossich and his partner, Raju Mirchandani, operated the popular Bar & Books chain of smoking lounges, with four locations in Manhattan. Riding the cigar boom of that period, these intimate spaces called to mind a Ralph Lauren fantasy of a country squire’s study, complete with moody lighting, shelves of leather-bound books and a wide array of single-malt scotches.
The pair eventually went their separate ways, dividing the properties. Mr. Grossich, who started Hospitality Holdings in 1998, kept Beekman Bar & Books near Sutton Place and Carnegie Bar & Books (now the Carnegie Club) near Carnegie Hall.
In 1999, he made his biggest statement to date, reinventing the soaring office that the financier John W. Campbell had installed for himself on the first floor of Grand Central Terminal in 1923, modeled on a 13th-century Florentine palazzo. Although the space had lost its opulence after Mr. Campbell died in 1957, serving as a storage facility and jail, among other things, Mr. Grossich saw its potential and turned it into an ornate cocktail lounge, the Campbell Apartment.
As The Times noted that year, his $1.5 million renovation included restoring the 30-foot-high wood-beamed ceilings and outfitting the space with a Moroccan-inspired rug and overstuffed banquettes set against stone walls. The place was soon packed with well-dressed tastemakers playing pool and sipping Jazz Age cocktails.
“With the Bar & Books we were manufacturing history,” Mr. Grossich told The Times. “With the Campbell Apartment we could leverage the real thing.”
Mark Chris Grossich was born on May 9, 1950, in Chicago, the elder of two sons of Christian and Phyllis (Ware) Grossich.
After earning a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in marketing from Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill., he worked at the advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi as an account executive. In 1991, he detoured into nightlife, opening Hudson Bar & Books in the West Village with Mr. Mirchandani.
There were bumps along the way. When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed a law in 2002 banning smoking in bars and restaurants, it was less than welcome to a proprietor of cigar bars.
“It is unfair and unfortunate that these antismoking zealots compare smoking a cigar and a cigarette,” Mr. Grossich said later in an interview with Nation’s Restaurant News. “There’s absolutely no comparison. Cigarette smokers are addicts. You will never see a cigar smoker use a lighted cigar to light up another one. There’s a ritual and finesse to it, and it’s relaxing.”
Nevertheless, he remained undeterred. That year, Mr. Grossich opened the World Bar, a lounge on the ground floor of Trump World Tower, a residential behemoth across from the United Nations.
Not long after it opened, the building’s developer, Donald J. Trump, showed up with his then girlfriend Melania Knauss to check out the space, which was furnished with brass Giacometti-style cocktail tables and gold-colored upholstered banquettes with matching ottomans, as reported in an article in The Times. “I go downtown a lot, and I own a lot downtown,” Mr. Trump was quoted as saying. “But this is more me.”
Eight years later, Mr. Grossich performed another feat of Manhattan landmark alchemy, opening the Empire Room, a 3,500-square-foot cocktail lounge in a former postal substation on the ground floor of the Empire State Building. Evoking the skyscraper’s Art Deco style, the establishment featured silver-leaf-embellished walls, a curved marble bar and gleaming chandeliers.
“I feel like I’m giving the Empire State Building the cocktail lounge it deserves,” Mr. Grossich said in an interview with The Times.
By that point, Hospitality Holdings had expanded to include its first restaurant, Madison & Vine, an American bistro and wine bar in the Library Hotel on Madison Avenue at East 41st Street, as well as Bookmarks, a rooftop lounge at the hotel. The company was bringing in $20 million a year, according to an article in 2010 on the trade site BizBash.
In 2016, he opened the Empire Rooftop, a lounge atop the Empire Hotel across from Lincoln Center.
The same year, Mr. Grossich lost the lease of the Campbell Apartment when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the terminal, signed Gerber Group, a New York hospitality company, to operate the space at a higher rent. (Mr. Grossich’s company was unsuccessful in a lawsuit that argued that the bidding process had been unfair.) The company renamed it the Campbell Bar, abandoned its dress code and traded the air of insider exclusivity for a more commuter-friendly appeal. “Before, it might have been on the stuffier side,” Scott Gerber, the chief executive of the group, said in an interview with The Times.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Grossich is survived by his brother, Keith, and a granddaughter. His marriage, to Elizabeth McGehee, ended in divorce in 2012.
Over the years, he held fast to his vision, whatever hurdles stood in his way. After the city enacted its smoking ban, he applied for a special license that allowed unrestricted puffing at the Carnegie Club, as a large percentage of the venue’s sales came from tobacco products. It remained a mecca for those who could discern the subtlest notes of a fine Cohiba.
Sure, patrons could bring their own cigars instead of choosing from the club’s carefully curated selection. But as Mr. Grossich said in an interview with The Times in 2014, he did not encourage the practice: “That’s a little like bringing your own eggs to a diner.”
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