Madonna endorses Baz Luhrmann's new East Village bar Monsieur on 4th Street

Monsieur is now open at 86 E. Fourth St., just east of Second Avenue, in the old Boiler Room space. 

The bar is reportedly owned and operated by the acclaimed Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann ("The Great Gatsby," "Elvis" and "Moulin Rouge!"), his Academy Award-winning production designer wife, Catherine Martin, and Golden Age Hospitality (The Nines, Le Dive, Acme, and Deux Chats). 

In its first week, Madonna endorsed the establishment in an Instagram carousel featuring Luhrmann, Akeem Morris, Jeremy O. Harris, and others. Per the post: "When you're feeling down, go to Monsieur."

 

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Vogue had a sneak preview of Monsieur in an online post on Jan. 16: 

When touring the space — formerly gay club The Boiler Room — Luhrmann spied a stained glass window. It was a lightbulb moment. He and Martin were in the throes of visual research for their upcoming film, Joan of Arc, visiting castles in Cologne and studying suits of armor. What if the bar took the form of a gothic medieval lair meets rock-and-roll club? 

And so, the fictional namesake proprietor of Monsieur was born: a man of the Middle Ages, who, like Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray, mysteriously never ages as he moves through the centuries adopting various personas until he becomes a nightlife impresario. "This was given to Monsieur when he first started out in a foreign country to remind him that he was a bellhop," Luhrmann says, pointing at a bellhop figurine. "Even though he tells people vaguely that he’s from royalty, he knows that he was a bellhop." 

Next, Martin got to work to distill that sprawling vision into a series of rooms. She sourced Jacobean revival chairs from Chairish and 1stDibs. She found modern-day tapestry makers. She even discovered a sculptor named Cardboard Dad on Instagram and commissioned him to make a cardboard suit of armor, which she then put in an aquarium case. ("It was going to be a real aquarium with armor and jellyfish," says Luhrmann, who believes Monsieur also had a previous stint as a pirate. Martin gently pointed out the impracticality and suggested this as an alternative — "I love it darling, brilliant, but absolutely impossible to do," Luhrmann says she told him.) 

She crafted cabinets of curiosity and commissioned an artist to make a stained glass window where the aforementioned pet chimp Thibault reads The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Meanwhile, Neidich collected photographs by New York nightlife legend Dustin Pittman to hang on the walls. Then he developed the menu. It includes shrimp cocktail, jamon iberico, grilled cheese, and (fittingly) croquettes monsieur with osetra caviar. 

Luhrmann's involvement with the new bar surprised a few residents we talked to after the Vogue piece came out. For the record, no one was particularly upset by this — just curious about what the clientele would be like and how scene-y it would be even though Luhrmann told Vogue "we're not naturally incl,ined towards hanging out with the establishment." (Still, Madonna arriving the other night in a black town car to a menu of croquettes monsieur with osetra caviar, served in a space dubbed a "medieval lair," doesn't exactly scream "neighborhood spot" for the locals.)

After 30-plus years as a dive-y neighborhood bar with a pool table and jukebox, The Boiler Room closed last April ahead of a move to a new space on Second Avenue. (Management said the building's landlord at No. 86 had them in a two-plus-year court battle over pandemic-related back rent payments.) 

Golden Hospitality's Jon Neidich and Craig Atlas received Community Board 3's approval for a new liquor license for the address in January 2024. The questionnaire on the CB3 website includes a letter from Neidich describing the still-unnamed venue this way: "In terms of concept, we are looking to create a great neighborhood spot which welcomes guests of all orientations and genders, and like Boiler Room is welcoming to all." There wasn't any mention of Luhrmann's involvement at this time. 

Golden Age Hospitality is renovating Lucy's at 135 Avenue A for its next EV project. In a letter to the local block association, Neidich told them that their "involvement is solely premised on preserving an East Village institution: Lucy herself will very much still be a part of this project (and will still be behind the bar!). We will not be changing the concept or design of the space (we will be adding some soundproofing in the ceiling and an ADA bathroom)."