The Loeb Boathouse in Central Park, an iconic restaurant and venue that has appeared in a number of movie classics and has attracted New York tourists and high society for decades, will close on October 16.
The establishment’s operator, Dean J. Poll, cited “rising labor and commodity costs,” according to a report filed in July.
All 163 Boathouse employees will be out of work after the shutters are closed, Mr. Poll, who has been running the restaurant since 2000.
“It’s a very difficult place to operate,” said Mr. poll. “It’s the location, the seasonality, the access and the cost,” he said of the restaurant, which is tucked away near the eastern shore of Central Park Lake and off-limits to the public by car.
And while this could be the end of the road for the long-standing restaurant, which has changed hands several times since opening in 1983, the boathouse, one of 400 locations in city parks, won’t close permanently.
Department of Parks and Recreation officials plan to find a new operator for the Boathouse “as soon as possible,” Crystal Howard, a spokeswoman for the department, wrote in an email. She also said the department is working “in good faith” with the current operator to accommodate those who have planned corporate events and weddings there.
Inflation has risen across the country, with many New Yorkers facing rising rent and grocery prices. Restaurants are among the hardest hit sectors during the corona pandemic. According to data from the Office of the New York State Comptroller, manufacturing jobs fell by 70 percent in the city between March and April 2020.
The Boathouse was previously closed on March 16, 2020 and Mr. Poll then fired the workers. In September 2020, he announced in a message that the Boathouse would remain closed for the time being. But the restaurant reopened in March 2021.
A spokesman for the union representing the Boathouse workers said the decision to close in October was deeply disappointing, adding that the laid-off workers would be recalled if a new operator takes over.
The current multi-column brick boathouse, which opened in 1954 after Carl M. Loeb, an investment banker and philanthropist, and his wife, Adeline, donated $305,000 to rebuild it, is the third version to exist since the late 1800s. century. The first, designed by Calvert Vaux in 1872, was a wooden Victorian structure that had been replaced by a simpler design in 1924, which fell into disrepair in the 1950s.
A New York institution, the boathouse has graced the silver screen—from “When Harry Met Sally” to “The Manchurian Candidate” to “27 Dresses”—and has hosted the city’s elite, including Ivana Trump and Luciano Pavarotti.
The Boathouse is also a magnet for nature lovers and bird watchers, many of whom record their sightings in a bird registry in the boathouse lobby.
Ray DeCarlo, 75, has visited the Boathouse at least once a year for an annual work conference for the past 20 years. He said he loved the atmosphere of the Boathouse and the view over the water.
“It’s like being in New York, but you’re not in New York,” said Mr. DeCarlo, who lives in New Jersey and was in New York City for the first time in three years because of the pandemic. “I am very disappointed.”
“There’s so much going on in the city,” Mr. DeCarlo said. “I don’t know where we’re going from here, but it’s not the New York I know and love.”
