Neiman-Marcus' Zodiac Room: Helen Corbitt and the Creation of Texan Taste
The Zodiac, a fashionable restaurant and tearoom featuring select foods, will open Monday on the sixth floor of Neiman-Marcus Company’s downtown store. Designed by Eleanor LeMaire of New York, the restaurant’s décor will suggest the roof of the world with signs of the Zodiac represented in both the main dining area and the terrace.
- The Dallas Morning News, April 26, 1953
One of the key elements to the legend of Neiman Marcus’ Dallas flagship has long been the Zodiac Room, a restaurant that helped establish fine dining in Texas and whose elegance transcended the city.1 When Stanley Marcus decided to enlarge and renovate the store in the early 1950s, it was decided that a restaurant would be installed on the to-be-built sixth floor to, according to Marcus, “attract more people to the downtown area and as a service to those customers from out of town who were spending the day in the store.”
Everything needed to be perfect for this $5 million expansion—which included two more floors and a new building extension, taking the square footage up to 245,000—so the store returned to their favored decorator, New York-based Eleanor LeMaire. She had worked with the firm since 1940 and was known for her deep understanding of store design. As the Zodiac restaurant was to be a centerpiece of a specialty store known for high fashion, a curving, slightly raised platform was installed to be used as a runway—both informally by models showing off the store’s inventory during luncheon and tea, and for more formal special events (such as Emilio Pucci’s first visit to Texas in 1956). With a seating capacity of almost 300, tables with pale blue tablecloths and even paler blue crystal glasses were arranged around an Italian tile pool (laden with waterlilies) and on an enclosed terrace—even the table sugar was dyed blue. Taking as inspiration the signs of the Zodiac, LeMaire painted the walls “a wonderful cerulean blue” with galaxy-patterned curtains while “the carpet’s deep enough for snowshoes.” As the opening ads rejoiced, “The star studded atmosphere of the Zodiac will give you an out of this world feeling.”
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