| Anthony's Pier 4 | |
| Mapframe: | yes |
| Established: | 1963 |
| Closed: | 2013 |
| Previous-Owner: | Anthony Athanas |
| City: | Boston |
| State: | Massachusetts |
| Country: | U.S. |
| Other-Label: | --> |
Anthony's Pier 4 was a restaurant on the South Boston waterfront opened in 1963 by restaurateur Anthony Athanas. In the 1980s, it was one of the highest-grossing restaurants in the United States. It closed in 2013, and the site was scheduled for redevelopment.
Restaurateur Anthony Athanas opened Anthony's Pier 4 in 1963 and lived in an apartment above it. It served traditional American food emphasizing locally caught seafood; the dining room, with seating for 500, overlooked Boston Harbor on three sides.[1] [2] In 1968, Athanas bought a 1927 former Hudson River cruise ship, the SS Peter Stuyvesant, and brought it from New York to Boston, where a specially built concrete and steel cradle held it in place adjacent to the restaurant; it served as a private bar and dining room and held a wine cellar as well as art works and mementoes collected by Athanas. The ship broke free, turned turtle, and sank during the Blizzard of February 1978; after unsuccessful efforts to salvage it, in 1979, all but the hull was removed.[3] [4]
The restaurant shot to prominence when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton ate there in 1964 while Richard Burton's Hamlet was at the Shubert Theatre.[2] It was a prominent restaurant throughout its first two decades, attracting both out-of-town celebrities and Boston politicians.[1] By the early 1980s, it was grossing about $12 million annually, making it one of the five highest-grossing restaurants in the United States.[1] [5] [6] Athanas died in 2005;[1] [7] the restaurant closed in 2013.[2] [5] A condominium tower was erected on the site of the parking lot,[5] and in 2016–17, the restaurant building was demolished, and the remains of the Stuyvesant were dredged up for scrap in early 2017.[3] A multi-use complex on the site, including offices and condominiums, opened in 2018.[8] [9]
In 1982, Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue were murdered in the restaurant's parking lot by Whitey Bulger and another associate of the Winter Hill Gang.[10] In 2014, Anthony's Pier 4 having closed, this murder was recreated at the Porthole in Lynn, Massachusetts for the 2015 film Black Mass.[11]
Norman Jewison's The Thomas Crown Affair 1968 film was shot here for one of its dinner date scenes between Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway.[12]