firstlook

Redhead Lounge

by A.D. Amorosi

The Latham Hotel, with its well-heeled doormen, pale marble halls and elegant chandeliers, is a totem of dignified dwelling, one that, like the Warwick, gave itself over to the hedonism of disco in the ’70s. For the Latham, that meant the swinging Bogarts and its backroom boîte, Not Quite Cricket, a windowless room quaintly remembered as this city’s most prominent "cheaters’ bar."

"I knew you were going to say that," laughs Jolly Weldon, owner and operator of the Latham’s two-year-old restaurant, Jolly’s, and its new, noirish adjunct, the dedicatedly retro Redhead Lounge. "Cricket was a hideaway. Not something you hear much of now, though we get our share of prolonged moments." With its recessed bar, low-lit vibe (white marble candleholders and dim lights atop Redhead’s few Vargas paintings provide the glow) and extremely close seating, it’s not impossible that Weldon’s black box could develop a reputation as a new place to tryst. "We ask no questions," Weldon says.

While Weldon and GM Gary Umstead built Jolly’s into an apple-red bistro/bar aptly swanky for the under-30 crowd (Francophile posters, zebra rugs, chill-out DJ weekends), Weldon wanted to create an upscale piano lounge where the 88 keys were central to the design (complete with its own bar and classic cognac snifter tip glass). "I wanted someplace where people could let down their hair and act silly," he says of the room, which has seen full-room sing-alongs that include both over and under 30-something folks seeking something radically different from the average club. So it’s not unusual to find "shower singers" and visiting vocalists accompanying local pianists/singers Kurt Martin, Mike Margarite and Ed Onarato. "People seem to want to be around that piano," Weldon says of the instrument, set on a raised stage surrounded by studded-leather stools. "People want to be interactive and entertained." Though a sliver of a window now exists along its 17th Street entrance and its signature cocktail is a colorful Stoli Orange cosmopolitan, everything else within Redhead -- leather chairs, glass-covered cocktail tables, walls and low ceilings -- is gleaming, panther-sleek black. "I like black," says Weldon of Redhead’s stark, dark design. Like Sinatra sang in his smokiest moment, "Excuse me while I disappear."

Redhead Lounge, Latham Hotel, 17th and Walnut sts., 215-563-8200.