Boston’s Lost Living Room: An Oral History of the Bristol Lounge

THE BREAKFAST CLUB

Boston’s business elite never had one centralized meeting spot. Then the Bristol opened, and suddenly every CEO, philanthropist, and wannabe heavyweight had found their new corner office—one with Public Garden views that made every seat a power seat.

Robin Brown, general manager, Four Seasons Hotel Boston, 1988 to 2001: It was the first Four Seasons in the world that had condos. Roger Berkowitz’s father lived in the condos. Thomas Lee of Thomas H. Lee Partners, his parents lived in the condos. Roger Saunders, Gene Ribakoff, Jean Yawkey, and Dick Egan of EMC. And then it was Ira Stepanian and Al Zeien, chairman of Gillette, next door at the Heritage. So around 200 people in the Four Seasons, probably 300 in the Heritage. The Bristol became their living room.

Lynne Kortenhaus, founder and principal, Kortenhaus Communications: It was where the CEOs, the top philanthropists, the socialites, they all convened. I call it the power place. You know, the power lunch, the power breakfast. Breakfast was really about the business community. Lunches were a split between the professional, social, and philanthropic worlds. Dinner and cocktails became more social.

Brown: Jean Yawkey had lunch five days a week in the Bristol Lounge. She had the same dish every day: chicken curry with rice and broccoli and two and a half glasses of chardonnay. Five days a week, Red Sox CEO John Harrington would walk in, and she would already be at the table wearing the same beige knit dress and the same jewelry and her little slippers, and they would sit for two hours. At least once a week, she’d say, “Robin, come join us.” During one of the lunches, she started to talk about Roger Clemens. And John said, “Robin, cover your ears.” And I sat there while they negotiated his salary and contract.

Stephen Tillinghast, senior doorman, Four Seasons: Countless are the CEOs that would come in on a daily basis. It was all the wheelers and dealers in the city. There were more business deals gone down there than in any other meeting room in the city.

Brown: [Bank of Boston CEO] Ira Stepanian would have a quarterly dinner with Warren Buffet. Warren wore a Brooks Brothers deep-blue suit, with lace-up black shoes that weren’t totally polished, a pretty crummy tie, and a blue button-down shirt, and was as charming as you could ever imagine. He and Ira used to sit and have a steak, a baked potato, and broccoli. One time, Warren was there buying Jordan’s Furniture, and then he bought Dexter shoes. Then he went on the board of Gillette, and Ira was his buddy. People would say, “Oh my God, Warren is in town and he’s buying up another business.”

Kevin Phelan, cochairman, Colliers International Boston office: Years ago, the breakfast spot was the old Ritz on Arlington. Then you had the Parker House. Then you had the Bostonian. And then you had the Bristol. The wanna-be-seen crowd moves.

Geri Denterlein, public relations professional and founder, Denterlein: The Ritz at the time was a place where a lot of the Beacon Hill crowd, like Bill Bulger, would have breakfast, and the business leaders started to migrate over to the Bristol.

Phelan: Jack Connors was the leader of the pack, and I think everybody followed him to where he was having his scrambled eggs.

Denterlein: I think it was more that Four Seasons was seen as a more modern place. It was the shiny new penny, and it happened to be five-star like the Ritz.

Ricardo Rodriguez, realtor: I closed many deals there. It was a great place to do business because it was so quintessential Boston. It was very elegant but in a subdued way.

Jonathan Soroff, contributing editor and society columnist, Boston magazine: There were people who had their very specific tables, like Charles Stith; he was Clinton’s ambassador to Tanzania. He was a big power broker in the Black community in Boston. He was a Methodist minister. He had his table.

Charles Stith, former U.S. ambassador to Tanzania: My wife used to tell people all the time: “If you can’t find him in his office, just go down the street to the Bristol.”

Brown: Yeah, you and everybody else, Charles. So you had board directors, and then the philanthropists came, like Flash and Bernie Wiley. And then journalists started to come. So Jack Thomas and all the gang at the Globe.

Brian McGrory, former Boston Globe reporter and editor: I had a memorable lunch there with Ralph de la Torre, who used the hour and a half to let me know how awful the Globe was and how under-appreciated he was.

Denterlein: I was editorial director at WBZ, and I would meet people there for breakfast to talk off the record.

Brown: They would come and do their interviews in a sofa or chair setting that made people very relaxed. Sort of had them in the public eye, so it was a little bit exposed, but nobody could ever hear your conversation because of the way the room was designed.

Soroff: The sound was muffled by all the fabric.

Dana Bisbee, former society columnist, Boston Herald and Improper Bostonian: The Bristol always had a kind of a dull hum, but you were never aware of what was going on around you.

Simón de Swaan, former assistant food and beverage director, Four Seasons: You couldn’t overhear a darn thing.

Laura Raposa, Inside Track columnist, Boston Herald: Everybody was there. I mean, it was like shooting fish in a barrel at lunchtime.

Bryan Rafanelli, event planner: The Bristol Lounge launched my career. I went there because my amazing golden-goose clients, Stephen and Roberta Weiner, wanted to meet there. I’m sitting with this rock-star family, and people come by, and they go, “This is Bryan Rafanelli, and he’s planning our daughter’s wedding.” Their daughter’s wedding was my first wedding. And then people were like, “Oh, I’m going to call you for my daughter’s wedding.” That’s how I met so many families that I eventually ended up working for.

Larry Moulter, former Boston Garden president: I used to be a book agent, and Helen Rees and I—we did a lot of projects together—would have lunch at the Bristol with prospective authors. We did several book deals there, including The Brothers Bulger by Howie Carr.

Maggie Gold Seelig, Realtor: There were things that happened there business-wise that, but for being there, wouldn’t have happened. I had a deal that came together there that ended up in a $20 million–plus sale back in 2016 or 2017, so it’s an even bigger deal than that would be today. It’s exactly what the Bristol was about. You’re sitting there having a coffee or breakfast with one person, and you run into somebody else. And that run-in ends up leading to a sale. Those are the things that you can’t do without being in person, in a central meeting place that was a magnet for people to come together. Those things don’t happen on an organized Zoom.

Moulter: The Bristol fit that moment. It was what Boston needed at that time. We were still trying to figure out who we were.

When the lights went down on Boston, the center of power in the city became focused on fun. / Pat Greenhouse / The Boston Globe

AFTER HOURS

After hours, the Bristol transformed from a power nexus into the kind of Boston party scene where actual celebrities joined in on the fun.

Soroff: The drinks crowd started right after 5 and went until the bar closed. It was Boston’s living room.

Tillinghast: On Friday and Saturday nights, there’d be a line of people waiting to get into the Bristol that went from the entrance all the way beyond the elevators. They’d wait 45 minutes, an hour and a half. It was that kind of place—a place to be seen.

Lisa Pierpont, former editor, Boston Common: I really feel like it was Boston’s version of the fanciest frat party ever. If there had been kegs, they would have been filled not with Miller, but Moët.

Tillinghast: We sold cigars at the bar, and they had smoke eaters back in the day. And it would be a cloud of cigar smoke. And we had Bob Winter; he played with the symphony, and when he wasn’t doing that, he played the piano at the Bristol.

Rodriguez: I think that for all of us that maybe went a little bit more often, it became like a neighborhood bar. It wasn’t a bar, but it felt like that. You’d go and see everybody. Then you were there the entire night, having drinks, having a blast, dancing. It was crazy.

Soroff: I can’t tell you the number of times that the doorman prevented me from driving home. There were times when I was literally wheeled out of there on a luggage cart.

Tillinghast: People were wild in the ’80s.

Soroff: People would go in there and get wasted, and there was a level of comfort. People acted like there were no consequences for anything you did there because it really did feel like it was your living room.

Tillinghast: Sometimes, it was organized chaos. And if they did get carried away, a manager went over to have words with them. It was very rare that I saw anyone asked to leave.

Brown: I can’t say who, but there was one rock band that everybody would know, that you would expect this behavior from. And there was a little bit of exposure that occurred at the bar. I had to do some discipline with the rock star.

Tillinghast: It was the drummer from a band. He was asked to sleep on the tour bus for that night.

Gayle Fee, Inside Track columnist, Boston Herald: The other thing I remember that we wrote about was when Billy Joel came off the stage at the Garden, went back to the Bristol, and played the piano till, like, 2 o’clock in the morning.

Tillinghast: Laura and Gayle from the Inside Track, I love them dearly, but they used to call me for information, and I wouldn’t give them anything. And then they’d go to Robin Brown, and he’d tell them.

Fee: I remember Robin calling to say, “Quick. Get over here. Bono is in the Bristol Lounge.”

Laura Baldini, socialite: Justin Bieber was there, and he had already been photographed in the Public Garden with no shoes. He was kind of losing his mind. He took over one of the couches closest to the window.

Soroff: I was at a table with a group of friends, including Doris Yaffe, who was like, “Who is Justin Bieber?” because she had no idea. And he was looking around, like, “Who doesn’t know who I am?”

Seelig: I ran into Lionel Richie there.

Moulter: I got a call from a very important lobbyist in DC, and he said, “I’ve got a client coming into Boston, and he’s an older guy. He’s Bavarian royalty.” And I said, “Would that be Prince Rupert?” And he said, “Do you know Prince Rupert?” And I said, “Sure, he’s the business manager of the Rolling Stones.” So as soon as Prince Rupert arrived at the Four Seasons, he called me, and we began to have a series of teas in the Bristol Lounge for the rest of the tour. That was the center of power for the Rolling Stones. They came and went from that lounge, backup singers and all, and Prince Rupert held court there.

Soroff: I had lunch with Joan Collins and her husband there.

Beth Dickerson, Realtor: I have this picture of Bono, and it’s still hanging in my living room today. It is of us talking about our kids on the couch in the Bristol.

Fee: Peter Wolf was there a lot.

Pierpont: I saw Jake Gyllenhaal there.

Raposa: After a watch party for the Cheers finale, the after-party was at the Bristol. That was a big night; there were a lot of people partying with the Cheers people.

Brown: I remember one night my wife, Marcia, and I were sitting with Mark Knopfler and James Taylor, having a Bristol burger till midnight, 1 in the morning. It was constant. From Phil Collins to the Stones to AC/DC to Ozzy Osborne.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

The Bristol wasn’t just about power plays or late-night revelry. It was the city’s vibrant core, thanks to a nearly magical mix: those knockout views, service that somehow felt both flawless and genuinely personal, a burger that could make grown men weep, and—crucially—valet parking that actually worked. In the end, it didn’t just serve Boston. It elevated it.

Roger Farrington, publicity photographer: People have no idea what a backwater Boston was in 1975 when I started working at the Charles Playhouse. It was crazy at night, and we had the Playboy Club and the Hillbilly Ranch and places like that.

Brown: The Four Seasons was the former site of the Playboy Club and a bunch of nightclubs. Behind the hotel was the Theater District, but it was a very tricky transitional area that connected to the elbow at Downtown Crossing.

Denterlein: It abutted the Combat Zone. It was kind of a wreck of a place.

Kortenhaus: Joe Spaulding, who was CEO of the Wang Center, used the Bristol as a place to meet with folks, whether it was trustees or other business leaders that he wanted to cultivate for the Wang.

Brown: I remember meeting with Joe Spaulding early on and then joining the board of the Wang. Joe and I and a bunch of wonderful people cleaned up the Theater District with new street lamps and lighting, with safety and police and cleaning, transitioning the neighborhood.

Moulter: When U2 came after they released Joshua Tree, they played in Worcester. I had been appointed two months earlier as president of the Garden, and one of my tasks was to bring bands and music back to Boston. So I met with U2’s manager, Paul McGuinness, at the Bristol Lounge for tea, and we had a wonderful time. I suggested the band might want to play the Garden. And he dumped on the building because of high union costs and poor sound, to which I said, “But we have a Celtics playoff game tomorrow night. Would you like to have the band come?” And they came, saw the game, and I brought them down to play on the parquet. And then they played in Boston from there on in.

Scoring a window seat overlooking the Public Garden was the era’s top status symbol. / The Boston Globe

Denterlein: I think the Bristol opened the community’s eyes to the beauty of the Public Garden. I don’t know that people recognized what a spectacular amenity the garden is for our city. It was an opening of that area. And I think the Bristol made the most of it with their windows.

Pierpont: The view was lovely. The view was charming. It’s iconic Boston.

Soroff: The Bristol always had a beautiful view overlooking the Public Garden. There is nothing like it.

Bill Brett, photojournalist: At breakfast, everybody had to fight to be in the window. Politicians like Bob Crane, he loved the window. And Jack Connors, when he entertained people, it was by the window.

Rafanelli: Years later, I was one of those lucky guys, and they’d always give me a window table. But it took a long time, and I had to get Chelsea Clinton’s wedding for it to happen.

Fee: Laura and I had one all the time.

Daniela Corte, fashion designer: The menu was unflappable. You always got that relentless quality.

Rafanelli: It wasn’t fancy food. It was all classic food, easy to eat. Lydia Shire and Barbara Lynch and all those folks were doing their thing, but the Bristol was this solid, classic place to go and eat.

Bisbee: The cheeseburger at the Bristol Lounge was far and away the best in Boston. Cooked correctly, and it wasn’t larger than the bun, it wasn’t smaller than the bun. It was a work of art.

Kortenhaus: Why did the burger get so much attention? I think because it was just a great hamburger on a bun.

McGrory: They had a $20 hamburger before there was any such thing.

Brown: We did push the price of a burger to the outer stratosphere at the time. We knew it was freaking expensive, but it was great.

Denterlein: The other thing the Bristol had that was second to none was their valet service. They were just unbelievable. You never had to worry about what was going to happen to your car.

Phelan: And the parking-lot guys. They knew who you were, how long you were going to be there, whose car stayed up top, whose car got put downstairs on another level of parking. And more important, timing. T.I.M.I.N.G. That meant when you came out of an 8 o’clock breakfast at five to 9, you hopped in your car, and you went. And that was critical.

Tillinghast: Well, the proximity of the garage really helped. It was literally around the corner and down the ramp.

Soroff: There’s a very well-known woman who I won’t name—a valet drove her Range Rover through the plate-glass window. So the Four Seasons was paying for a loaner Range Rover, and she kept it long after the time they arranged for her to have it, and she didn’t return it. So they enticed her into the Bristol, and they took the car from her.

Denterlein: I think what made it so special was the staff. They were just extraordinary in the way they conducted themselves, their memories for details of things that you liked.

Rodriguez: I think the staff learned when to come to the table and when not to come to the table. And so I think that made it very easy and conducive for business.

Soroff: I would walk into the bar, and my drink would be waiting before I even sat down.

Denterlein: The bartenders were always pitch-perfect on the balance of bourbon to cherries.

Rodriguez: It was very personal. Despite the fact that it was a bustling, large space, it was very intimate. I think what brought that intimacy was the people who worked there.

Seelig: Honestly, it was my Cheers. Everybody knew your name. When you are not from Boston, you have a different path. And I definitely remember when I had my sofa at the Bristol, and the people there knew me, feeling like, “Oh, I’m a Bostonian now.”

The Bristol’s food was delicious without being precious, and no one in town made a better burger. / Stuart Cahill / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald via Getty Images

Rodriguez: It was more than the space, more than the food, more than the drinks, more than whatever was happening there. There was a sense of community there.

De Swaan: It had a lot of loyalty from the community. And from a Four Season’s point of view, there was a lot of appreciation for the locals and their loyalty.

Matthias Kiehm, former Four Seasons hotel manager, 1999-2002: Hotels in the ’80s and the ’90s and maybe early 2000s were part of the community. I am not entirely sure that you can say the same thing today.

Kortenhaus: It was like a private club, but one that didn’t exist back then. The only private clubs that existed back then were white, male, and gray-haired, and this was a place for anyone and everyone. It felt exclusive, but it never felt exclusionary. They were able to balance that appropriately so that people didn’t feel left out or discriminated against.

Stith: When I came to the Boston area in 1975, there were no Blacks on the city council, none on the school committee. The busing issue was fresh. The Bristol was really that kind of place where you were able to break through some of that stuff and have some of these conversations and move the city forward. One of the things that really changed a lot during Robin’s tenure was the diversity of the staff; when you looked at the Bristol, it is what we imagined the city could be.

Brown: We never had diversity and inclusion. Nobody had to tell anybody—we never even thought about it.

Denterlein: I don’t know what exactly Robin did, but he made it very welcoming to the women professionals of the time. It wasn’t easy to feel comfortable every place that you went, to feel respected as a woman leader. And I felt that the Bristol was gender-neutral in a sense.

Stith: I might be accused of a little hyperbole here, but I don’t know if Boston would have become what it is if it hadn’t been for the Bristol.

“I don’t know if Boston would have become what it is if it hadn’t been for the Bristol.” – Charles Stith

The Bristol Lounge’s Teddy Bear Tea became an indelible Christmastime tradition for legions of city children. / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald via Getty Images

ANNUAL CHAOS

While the Bristol’s daily rhythm of deal-making and cocktail-sipping kept the place humming year round, two annual events managed to eclipse even the regular intrigue: the Teddy Bear Tea and the after-party for the Party in the Park. One became the kind of family tradition people planned their calendars around; the other spawned stories that still get told at dinner parties decades later.

De Swaan: During the holidays, the Bristol would have the Teddy Bear Tea. And as soon as we would open the reservations, we would sell out the entire month of December in a matter of hours.

Courtney Forrester, former director of public relations, Four Seasons: There were two seatings a day for the month of December, all the way up until Christmas. And we would have local celebrities read Christmas tales to the kids.

Pierpont: I read for seven years at the Teddy Bear Tea. The kids were just running wild all over the Bristol. And one time, I saw a toddler smash his cookie into the very same table that I saw Jack Conners sitting at the next day. I was thinking, This is so bizarre.

Ashley Bernon, director of client relations, Touchstone Closing: I spent 10 Teddy Bear Teas there with my children. It was part of the culture of our sweet little town.

Tillinghast: Little girls would come in dressed to the hilt. It turned into tradition. To this day, I still talk to people, and they say, “Oh, I came in here as a kid for the Teddy Bear Tea.”

Dickerson: Everybody brought toys for the children at Boston Children’s Hospital. And then they had this amazing, beautiful Christmas tree that all the toys would go under. And then they had this big, big teddy bear dressed up that would run around and talk to all the children. And it was amazing. There was nothing else like it in Boston.

Forrester: A Four Seasons staff member would wear this bear costume and go around and greet the kids. Everybody on staff took a turn.

Tillinghast: I did not do it. I was going to, but I saw what you look like afterward. That costume is 400 degrees inside. You lose 5 pounds every time you put it on and walk around for an hour. I’m like, not for me.

Kortenhaus: So there’s an event, and it still exists, called Party in the Park, and it was created really to benefit the public parks in the city. It is really the ladies who lunch, and they have a luncheon that raises a lot of money. It’s kind of a hat party, much like the Kentucky Derby. The event happens from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in one of the parks. And when the Bristol was around, most of the women went back there afterward.

Baldini: Every year, we’d ask the staff, “Are you guys excited for Party in the Park?” And some would be like, “Oh, thank God I’m not working that day.” And others were like, “Oh, we love this day of the year,” because that’s when wild things would happen.

Soroff: The after-party was always super rowdy. You get women who don’t
generally weigh more than 80 pounds drinking champagne at 11 in the morning, and you know, you’re going to get some interesting results.

Baldini: Imagine a Wednesday at 1:30 or 2 with hundreds of drunk women in hats. Anything could happen at that point.

Pierpont: One year, we’re all sipping whatever we sipped, and all of a sudden, shots were firing in the form of diamond-ring-embellished punches. I’ve never seen something like that take place anywhere; it was particularly head-turning to have it happen at the esteemed Bristol Lounge. It was jaw-dropping.

Soroff: Baldini took Beth Dickerson’s phone and threw it across the bar, which is what made everyone notice. It was a little incongruous. I mean, these beautifully dressed women. Baldini was dressed head to toe in Alexander McQueen, and Beth was similarly decked out.

Corte: I look back, and I see Laura and the cops and people punching each other. It was some big fight about the girls and who said what.

Tillinghast: Cops? No. Maybe hotel security. When people talk, the story always gets bigger. Everyone wants to embellish it a little bit more.

Baldini: So the truth is, we were laughing way too loud, ordering caviar like it was fries and knocking over a bottle of champagne mid-toast. I probably threw a napkin at some point just to make it a little more dramatic.

Dickerson: To my knowledge, we didn’t get into a physical fight. I don’t know where people got that. I know that people still talk about it.

Baldini: We were sitting there together at Mistral later that night, eating pizza and laughing our asses off about everybody thinking we got into some huge fight. There was cetainly not a fight. It was just that kind of night, and it turned into local legend.

LIGHTS OUT

Like many other hospitality businesses, the Bristol shuttered in March 2020. But unlike the rest, it never reopened. For five years now, it’s been sealed off behind a wall in the Four Seasons lobby—untouchable, like a museum exhibit titled “Where Power Used to Lunch.” Now, as the hotel hits its 40th anniversary, whispers are making the rounds that new management might resurrect the Bristol. The hotel has denied the rumors, and at presstime, nothing could be confirmed. But if it does reopen, will it still be Boston’s living room?

Rafanelli: I’m a businessman, so I was really confused as to why the Four Seasons closed down this place that was, like, the epicenter of the city. And to this day, I don’t understand.

Pierpont: I thought they were out of their minds. It was the hottest place in town forever. How could they possibly close it?

Bernon: When it closed down, the hardest thing to let go of was our holiday traditions there. We had that special, really magical spot that touched people’s hearts. We don’t have that in Boston right now.

Baldini: I still miss their overpriced brunch.

Brown: When it closed, I was speechless. And my phone never stopped ringing. Everybody was asking why it closed. I still hear that once a week. Now we’re down in Florida, and I still hear, “Why is the Bristol Lounge closed?” So it’s a constant. I never really dug in. I didn’t want to gossip. I don’t know what the reasons were. There must have been great reasons for it, so it wasn’t my place to comment.

Bernon: I’m still sort of in denial about it, and I think most people are. We all just keep saying, “Oh, it’s definitely going to come back.” For the real locals, I don’t think anyone truly believes that this is a forever decision. It seems like it’s just a moment in time.

Dickerson: I heard that the residents of the Four Seasons have come together, and among themselves, they convinced a restaurant to go into where the Bristol Lounge was and reopen it, but it will not be part of the actual hotel. It’s going to be a leased-out situation.

Seelig: I heard Jody Adams is going to take it.

Dickerson: I heard Major Food Group [which owns Contessa].

Baldini: I think whoever takes over the Bristol needs to understand that it was the Bristol.

Kortenhaus: I think it could definitely come back. I think people are yearning for spaces to gather in that feel comfortable.

Tillinghast: The place was always packed. To get a seat at the bar was something. Hopefully, it will be that way again.

Rafanelli: Maybe it would take off again. I’m not sure.

Bisbee: I think if they ran the Bristol Lounge now, the young professionals and the up-and-comers and the current society people wouldn’t understand what was going on. It would be too retro. But if I could return to such a place, comfortable without being plush, friendly without being intrusive, leisurely without being lazy, to enjoy a perfectly cooked cheeseburger, just the right size for the bun, I would be the first in line.