New York's Campbell Apartment

Sequestered in a quiet corner of Grand Central Terminal, the Campbell Apartment is a wonderful glimpse of old New York and a welcome respite from the frenzy of Midtown Manhattan. Finding the place is half the fun. The hunt can entail riding in a service elevator then scurrying through an abandoned function room (check the website for more specific directions).

Once past the entrance, however, visitors are treated to a magnificent, baronial lounge worthy of the Morgan Library or the Frick Collection. It was built in 1923 as the private office and salon of financier John W. Campbell, a New York Central board member whose Gilded Age tastes ran to Persian rugs, pipe organs and Florentine palazzos. Attended by his personal butler Stackhouse, Mr. Campbell conducted business by day and receptions at night in the enormous 3,500 square-foot space. The room came replete with a handpainted plaster of Paris ceiling, leaded windows and an enormous stone fireplace. He never actually slept there.

After Mr. Campbell died in 1957, the apartment fell into a long, slow, Miss Havisham-like decline: first as a signalman's office, then as a storage closet and finally as an ad hoc jail. In 1999, it was restored at a cost of $1.5 million by Hospitality Holdings, who spruced it up again in 2007 with the help of London designer Nina Campbell (no relation).

Roughly a dozen people were enjoying the Campbell Apartment on a recent weekday afternoon at around four. Sitting at the bar underneath a beautiful mahogany balcony, I availed myself of a Kentucky Ginger, a house cocktail featuring bourbon, ginger liqueur, agave nectar, fresh lemon and muddled rosemary. A few couples sat by the fireplace in happy silence, soaking in the room.

The Campbell Apartment, 89 East 42nd Street, open Monday-Saturday from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m., Sunday from 3 p.m. to midnight.