The Living Room at the W

Today’s tourist-congested Times Square is hardly synonymous with chic cocktail bars, but this $10 million revamp of the W Times Square’s lobby bar—spearheaded by restaurant guru Matt Levine (Chalk Point Kitchen, the Handy Liquor Bar)—is looking to change that. The 40-foot bar taps into the hub’s storied history: An entryway is flanked with smoked bronze glass and velvet fabrics recalling the grand theaters that populated the area in the 1920s; a brass-dichroic glass “DJ ball” pays homage to the square’s annual New Year’s Eve tradition; and an expansive mural depicts the colorful characters who have populated the crossroads over time, from the showgirls of the ’60s to the New Wave teens of the ’80s. The Handy Liquor Bar drinksman Albert Depompeis created Gotham-nodding cocktails like the Sunset Park Mule (Herradura reposado, ginger beer), the Rush Hour SideCar (Rémy Martin, blood orange) and the bourbon-grapefruit Washington Heights Manhattan, splashed with habanero vermouth and hopped grapefruit bitters