Jefferson
New York City
Philip Wu Architect

Philip Wu mines a wealth of invention from a modest budget for a Minimalist restaurant in Manhattan showcasing American cuisine

© Bjorg Photography

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By William Weathersby, Jr.

There is more of a cultural melting pot behind Jefferson than its presidential-sounding name and New American cuisine would imply. Architect Philip Wu—Vietnamese-born, Hong Kong–raised, and Harvard-trained—has designed the handsome, 70-seat Greenwich Village eatery for chef/entrepreneur Simpson Wong, a Malaysian of Chinese ancestry who built his reputation with traditional Southeast Asian cooking at Cafe Asean, his other establishment, located several doors down the same block of West 10th Street. The site of Jefferson, meanwhile, is a former no-frills Greek diner within a 1960s storefront overlooking the colorful Jefferson Market Library designed by Calvert Vaux in 1877. Such a rich confluence of ingredients has yielded a serene space that appeals to connoisseurs of both fine dining and design. The Minimalist, loftlike interior may at first glance appear disarmingly simple, but on closer inspection unfolds as a carefully constructed collage of light, texture, and volume.

When launching Jefferson, Wong, a self-taught chef who learned his craft preparing meals for his father’s timber company in Malaysia, says he wanted to reach beyond the simpler fare of Cafe Asean to showcase a sophisticated vein of American cuisine that juxtaposes ingredients and cooking styles of East and West.

Although the pedigree of the storefront brick-and-glass facade was of little interest in itself, Wu says, the building resides in a landmarked historic district, so major architectural changes were not allowed. Wu chose to extend the height of the single doorway, leaving the brick facade intact with scars from the removal of the former horizontal diner sign. Capitalizing on the three large windows overlooking the garden of the library across the street, Wu placed a lounge with banquette seating flush with the facade to "serve as the restaurant’s calling card, instead of major signage."

The interior of the restaurant is divided into four main spaces: vestibule, bar/lounge, dining, and service/kitchen. Inserting vertical planes would have blocked views of the garden from the dining room situated to the rear of the floor plan, so Wu employed varied ceiling heights, ranging from 10 feet, 4 inches to 12 feet, 9 inches, to demarcate discrete zones. The changing landscape of the ceiling plane—which features two new skylights (plus a third within the small bathroom), becomes a subtle yet effective visual canopy above the interplay of diners and waitstaff.

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Formal name of Project:
Jefferson

Location:
New York City

Gross square footage:
1,500 sq ft & 1,000 sq ft. basement

Owner:
Mr. Simpson Wong

Architect:
Philip Wu Architect
450 W. 20th St, Suite 3/
New York, NY 1011
Ph – 917.945.9190
Fax- 212.85.5900