Smith & Mills

Smith & Mills is a TriBeCa bar & restaurant designed by John McCormick. I've never been, but it looks pretty wonderful, with blueprints on the walls and industrial pieces combined with soft banquette seating.


It's ...the sort of place where a 1920s Eastern European factory worker could blow off some steam after a hard day hammering steel.

Inside the non-marked spot, you'll find a diminutive den of working-class touches: male staffers in basic blue workman's jackets, ladies in factory dresses (so unsexy they're sexy) and shelves lined with antique dishes, cans and mason jars. Meanwhile, low-lit Edison bulbs create a moody, amber vibe you can soak up from one of the faded lime banquettes as you sip vintage cocktails (Old Fashioneds, Sazeracs, Negronis). In the bathroom—a onetime elevator shaft—you'll use a train car sink that empties manually (it'll be just like that summer you spent in Dresden). (UrbanDaddy)

serves classy cocktails of the Hoover regime to women with vintage handbags and men who’ve cultivated the facial hair of silent-movie villains. The bar itself is tiny, but so low-lit you’ll hardly notice how small it is. Shadows and 30-watt Edison bulbs are complicit in helping to create a dramatic atmosphere, though the space has plenty of narrative to begin with: Smith and Mills is in a 200-year-old building that once housed a coffee roaster, a seafarers’ inn and a horse stable. The current decor is remarkable, from the drainpipe mirrors behind the bar to the ship blueprints that adorn the walls to the bathroom, which is actually a vintage elevator. Everything seems rusty, which lends Smith and Mills a blue-collar, proletariat feel. (PaperMag)