SUNDAY’S
WELL
KIPS BAY, NEW YORK
SUNDAY’S WELL | Hospitality
NEW YORK, NY (KIPS BAY)
1,500 SF | Interior / EXTERIOR RENOVATION
The chosen name of this Kip’s Bay local brought with it a lineage of its own—though perhaps unknown to most outside of residents of Cork, Ireland or fans of their local rugby team. Nevertheless, the search through culture and history leveled on a choice that came to define the moniker of this public house to a new generation of regulars even before the doors were open. The space itself bore a similar quality, having housed pint-drinking patrons for over a decade under different establishment headlines. These layers of fingerprints and artifacts set the stage for deciding which pieces of history would be used to anchor the new countenance of the design and which would be removed to make way for elements that would create a new experience.
Ultimately it was some of the largest bones that ended up creating a starting point for new ideas. With some layers of ornament stripped back, the basic structure of an Irish back bar served as a base for its new organization. Though found in bold colors of black and gold, the historic carved canvas was coated in cream, allowing a new lighter presence to yield to the lines of darker wood sewn into old infrastructure for display and storage. Tall spires of lighting then pierced through the new composite to pin the old and new together in place.
Though one may not have known during the years of cold glass being lifted from worn black paint, peeling back the dark finish revealed beautiful mahogany boards at widths and quality difficult to replicate in today’s world. The rich warmth of the new (old) surface of tender became an element that tied the entire space together whether it was seating, trim or a detached sill on the exterior to foreshadow what lay within. While the reuse of key items had the added benefit of doubling down on the latent energy of high quality materials and sparing them from a fate in a landfill, they also provided the ability for Sunday’s Well to straddle the line of being both familiar and current.
