New York Café is located in what was originally called the New York Palace. This eclectic palace was built by the American New York Life Insurance Company in 1894, in order to have a representative building in every European capital. New York Café, which is located on the ground floor of the palace, has great cultural value for Hungary. From the early 1900s it was the main gathering place for Hungarian writers, filmmakers and artists. Almost all of the century’s great artists started out in this café, writers were even given free paper and ink. But not only writers favoured the atmosphere: the world-famous Michael Curtiz, a.k.a Kertész Mihály, who directed Casablanca, also frequented this café in the 1910s. These rooms have chandeliers hanging from the extravagantly high ceilings. The interior’s lavish decoration gives the space an outstanding sense of luxury and grandeur with its gold, pastel colored walls, red velvet chairs, twisted marble columns, indoor balconies and staircases. It also has enormous windows looking onto the street.
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Filmed at this location
Several scenes from the 1984 movie Red Heat, and Die Hard V were shot in the building. In 2012, the drama called Bel Ami starring Robert Pattinson and Uma Thurman was shot here, during which the café doubled as a historic Parisian café. In 2018, the café was featured as a Cold War Era Russian location in the movie Red Sparrow featuring Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton and Jeremy Irons.