I was startled to read in the New York Times about the plan to remove Picasso’s large curtain, Le Tricorne (1919), from the landmarked Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building in New York. The reason, according to current owner RFR Holding, is the imminent failure of the travertine-clad wall against which the 19-foot-high curtain, originally painted as a backdrop for a Diaghilev ballet, is mounted. I was aghast—and surprised, as I am very familiar with this wall.

New York City’s legendary Four Seasons restaurant, now celebrating its 50th anniversary, has embarked on the restoration of its famed Philip Johnson-designed interior in the Seagram Building, completed in 1958. Phyllis Lambert, the architect and patron who convinced her father, Samuel Bronfman, owner of the Seagram Company, to choose Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Johnson as the architects of his new headquarters building on Park Avenue, guided the selection of Belmont Freeman, FAIA, as the new architect for the restoration of this culinary outpost.

In New York City, where restaurants last an average of two years and seldom more than seven, a dining establishment that survives for half a century might seem a culinary Methuselah.