Sardi’s Restaurant opened on March 5, 1927, on forty fourth Avenue. It shortly grew to become a Broadway establishment. Vincent Sardi wished to mimic a jazz-age Parisian nightclub, Zelli’s, which lined its partitions with caricatures of the artists, musicians, and brokers who had been its regulars. Sardi’s would make its personal composite portrait of New York’s theatre scene.
The primary official Sardi’s caricaturist was Alex Gard, a Russian exile. Sardi and Gard signed a contract that supplied a meal a day in Sardi’s for Alex Gard in return for his caricatures. It was stipulated that Sardi couldn’t complain in regards to the caricatures and Gard couldn’t complain in regards to the meals. Gard produced 720 caricatures for the restaurant’s partitions by the point he died in 1948, collapsing within the Instances Sq. subway station.
Sardi’s custom of caricatures continues in the present day, in the identical location the place it started. Three official caricaturists have succeeded Gard; in the present day, over 1,200 portraits line the restaurant’s partitions, with about 20 added annually. Most of them are of actors.

at Jenny’s, New York
till March 4, 2023