The Water Club

The story

In the mid-1980s, The Water Club ranked as the tenth largest grossing restaurant in the United States — not bad for a place built on two barges. It began with a 1978 city request for proposals on a site that had been nothing but parking lots, and developer Buzzy O'Keeffe, who already knew the particular headaches of waterfront dining from his River Café in Brooklyn, signed on. The result was Manhattan's first waterfront restaurant, moored at East 30th Street, looking out across the East River toward Long Island City and Greenpoint.