Two Panels from Toots Shor's Restaurant, New York, New York

In 1939 legendary host Toots Shor opened his eponymous restaurant and bar in midtown Manhattan, establishing a new social hub for the city.  The owner's unflagging hospitality and highly gregarious nature soon transformed the venue into a phenomenon as athletes, celebrities and politicians flocked there to brush elbows with one another and to recount the latest ball game or boxing match.  Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Joe DiMaggio, and Frank Gifford were all regular diners at the restaurant and soon became close friends of Toots Shor's. In 1959 the restaurant moved a block north and was expanded.  These two plaques, along with a third one, were probably original to the first location, and were hung in the main dining room of the renovated restaurant at the suggestion of the architect Charles Luckman who designed the interiors.  Toots Shor's remained open at this location until 1971.  The colorful biography of the restaurant impresario will be the subject of an upcoming independent documentary feature film, Toots Shor: Bigger than Life, produced and directed by Kristi Jacobson, to be released in 2006.

--James Buresh