![]() Studio be-poles, working with scenic painters from the opera house, have dressed the interiors with art works and antiques. There’s a sense of theatre throughout, draped with velvets, mohair and damasks, brass and crimson, lit by vintage chandeliers. The courtyard was sunk by several metres, creating a dramatic focal point for the restaurant, and the Magistrates’ Court turned into a ballroom, painted with a moody cloudscape mural that wouldn’t be out of place in the National Gallery down the road. Two more NoMads followed, in LA and Las Vegas, along with a pair of LINE hotels and the big and boisterous Ned in London, in collaboration with Soho House’s Nick Jones.įor the first NoMad outside the States, Zobler brought in the design team of Roman and Williams – whose CV includes the Ace hotels, the new British Galleries at New York’s Metropolitan Museum and Zoolander ( Zoolander! Give me the Blue Steel!) – to completely reimagine the space. It’s a heritage that appealed to Andrew Zobler, founder of the Sydell Group, who had launched the NoMad in New York in a 1920s-era Beaux Arts building. To one side was the Bow Street Police Station, home to the city’s first police force, known as the Bow Street Runners (surely there’s a Netflix series in that?). Carriages once drove through the 13ft-high entrance, dropping off prisoners in the courtyard. ![]() Author Henry Fielding was a magistrate Oscar Wilde, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Kray Twins were tried here, Vivienne Westwood too, for a punk-era breach of peace in 1977. Until 2006 this was the Bow Street Magistrates’ Court, dating back to the days when half the places round here were gin shops. What's the story? Pull up a pew – there’s a lot of history. The restaurant’s been booked out for weeks half of London is champing at the bit to land a seat. A catwalk leading from the lobby to the bedrooms forms a balcony for people-watching. Daylight paints the space in shifting watercolour hues. Centre stage is the courtyard restaurant, a three-storey glass atrium rising like a Victorian greenhouse, dressed with hanging plants. From around five o’clock, a noise begins that many haven’t heard for a while – gradually rising in volume, it sounds a little like theatre stalls before curtain up: the sound of expectation. Box-fresh white trainers on lobby staff gold and black silk jackets in the library bar. There’s a sense of occasion without the grandeur. ![]() Set the scene Just across the road from the neoclassical oomph of the Royal Opera House – and only a little more modest in scale with its etched Portland-stone façade – the NoMad is set in a former court.
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