Bar Art

Many a Manhattan architect out of a job sat down at his drawing board last month to plot a setting for legal beer. His incentive was a contest of the Architects' Emergency Committee. Last week the designs for taprooms, cafes and beer gardens were hung in Manhattan's Industrial Mart, an idea showroom for the hotel & restaurant trade. One Peter Copeland, an architect who has not paid his rent in two months, won the first prize for both cafes and taprooms. His cafe had a modernistic oval bar in blue and white. One Kate Hall won first prize for a beer garden design, showing tables around a mammoth blue vase and plots of pink flowers, the walls shaded by a yellow awning. One contestant entered a design for a cafe with a glass front that could be raised or lowered to open it to the sidewalk. Last week hotel men went to the Mart for ideas for equipment. Three orders resulted.

Far from unemployed last week was the prince of U. S. bar-makers: James ("Jimmy") Mont, 29, a slim, Manhattanized Turk. He was an unsuccessful interior decorator until in June, 1932, he got the idea of using fancy bars as a wedge to redecorate people's apartments. He would sell a bar that looked fine in his Modern Salon Co.'s Manhattan showroom but looked like a fair carrousel in the customer's apartment. Then Mont would redecorate the room to match the bar, the whole apartment to match the room. He made more ornate bars, got bigger decorating jobs. He puts all his profits back into the business, keeps 50 men busy in his Manhattan factory. Last February he opened a second Manhattan showroom in the St. Moritz Hotel. Next fortnight he will open a $50,000 display at the Traymore in Atlantic City. Mont bars run all the way from $80 to $8,000. His best customers: top grade speakeasies, underworld tycoons.

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