Campbell Apartment 1.35

The Campbell Apartment is a bar and cocktail lounge—recently reopened after a change in management—located in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. The space was once the office of American financier John W. Campbell, a member of the New York Central Railroad's board of directors. Later used for office space, as a studio by CBS Radio and as a jail by Metro-North Railroad, the space was restored to its original opulence following renovations totaling nearly $2 million in 1999 and 2007.Located in the southwestern corner of the Grand Central Terminal building — above the corner of 42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue — the space is reached by a staircase from the Balcony Level. It was first leased in 1923 by John Campbell from William Kissam Vanderbilt II, whose family built the Terminal. The 3500sqft space was a single room 60ft long by 30ft wide with a 25ft ceiling and an enormous faux fireplace in which Campbell kept a steel safe. At that time, it was the largest ground floor space in Manhattan. Campbell commissioned Augustus N. Allen, an architect known for designing estates on Long Island and town houses in Manhattan, to build an opulent office, transforming the room into a 13th-century Florentine palace with a hand-painted plaster of paris ceiling and leaded windows. Its mahogany balcony with a quatrefoil design that still exists today. The Persian carpet that took up the entire floor was said to have cost $300,000, or roughly $3.5 million today. Campbell added a piano and pipe organ, and at night turned his office into a reception hall, entertaining 50 or 60 friends who came to hear famous musicians play private recitals. He had a butler named Stackhouse.