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NEW YORK - Stand in the dining room of the Times Square Brewery, and the reason for its popularity is as clear as glass. More specifically, as clear as the 16-foot-tall windows that look out on the hustle and bustle of the world's most famous intersection, for which the 240-seat, 6,873square-foot brewpub is named.
The Times Square Brewery is a freestanding unit located at the south end of Manhattan's recently rejuvenated Times Square, on a narrow strip of West 42nd Street where Broadway and Seventh Avenue cross paths. It stands atop the renovated main entrance to the Times Square subway station, and its exterior signage features a silhouetted, 1930s-style character hefting a beer mug that rises and falls with the same regular cadence of the nonstop traffic below.
The interior is divided into two floors, with a bar on the first floor and the dining room upstairs. The downstairs bar is ringed by high-back, plushly upholstered bench-style seating. The dining room is divided in the middle by a small bartender's station and an enormous scaffolding, on top of which rests the row of beer fermenters necessary for the production of beer. Three walls of the dining room are clear glass, affording a panoramic view of Times Square. The fourth wall is spartan, its only significant adornment a collage-style mural depicting the landmarks and icons of Times Square together with the beer-mug-toting silhouette icon of the brewpub.
The restaurant is the brainchild of its owner and managing partner, Helen Lucas Liftig, who worked with architect Richard Bloch, a principal in Yui + Bloch Design Associates - a full-service design and consulting firm specializing in projects for the foodservice and hospitality industries - to turn her concept into a reality. "This place wouldn't exist without Helen," Bloch said. "Helen was the dynamic force behind everything. There would be no Times Square Brewery without her."
Working with Liftig, Bloch quickly arrived at a guiding principle for the restaurant's design.
"The vision was to have a factory...