Caffè Storico is a 74-seat restaurant inside the New-York Historical Society at 170 Central Park West, on Manhattan's Upper West Side. rcRussell delivered the interior build-out as part of the Historical Society's $65M institutional renovation, with restaurant operations by Stephen Starr Restaurants and interior design by de Vicq design.
The dining room reads as a single, cohesive idea — a Venetian-palace-inspired room with a back wall of bespoke plate-display cabinetry holding 18th- and 19th-century European and Chinese porcelain drawn from the Historical Society's collection. Brass chandeliers, a yellow banquette, a marble-topped bar, and herringbone wood floors complete the editorial, with a glazed pass-through onto the museum lobby keeping the restaurant in dialogue with the institution that houses it.
The build-out happened inside a fully active cultural institution — coordination with the museum facilities team, the operator, and the designer ran throughout, with finishes calibrated to the standard of a flagship Manhattan hospitality space.
