The Campbell

In the 1920s, financier John W. Campbell kept a private office and salon tucked into the southwest corner of Grand Central Terminal, built to look like a Florentine palazzo hall — a hand-painted timber ceiling, a leaded-glass window the size of a small apartment, a stone fireplace. Decades of other uses followed, including a stretch as a transit police facility, before the room was restored as a cocktail bar. It reopened in its current form in 2017.

Today you order a Manhattan where a millionaire once kept his safe, and the commuter rush hums just beyond the door. The drama is the room itself — come early in the evening, before the after-work crowd peaks, and take it in from one of the leather seats along the wall. Few bars in the city carry this much architecture per square foot.