“Tavern On The Green”, A Monument To Excess, Closes

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 30, 11:07AM EDT · Published Dec 30, 6:03AM EST

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“Tavern on the Green”, one of the most lavish restaurants in New York City, will close on New Year’s Eve. The Central Park icon once took in more receipts than any other eatery in the Big Apple.

During its best times, customers had to book tables days ahead and on major holidays finding a seat or two was nearly impossible. At Christmas the trees around the restaurant were hung with thousands of small white lights.

But, the people who ate at Tavern on the Green were mostly well-to-do New Yorkers and tourists who were willing to pay a few hundred dollars for the memory of visiting at one of the most famous restaurants in the world. The recession has eroded tourism in the City and the collapse of the financial industry has cut sharply into the income of New Yorkers.

There have been many victims of the recession. Tavern on the Green was simply one of the most visible.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.