New Café To Open In the Square

A café called Tory Row is slated to open at the end of the month on Brattle Street in the former home of the Greenhouse Café, which closed nearly two years ago after three decades in the Square.

Tory Row will be a full service, 80-seat restaurant with both European and American elements, according to co-owner Matthew W. Curtis. The café’s interior design and menu are still being finalized.

Richard Getz, who owns the 3 Brattle St. location, hinted that the restaurant would open near the end of the month, but both he and a spokeswoman for Tory Row declined to provide an exact date.

“There’s still so much of the concept that’s being developed, so we can’t really say much for certain at this point,” said spokeswoman Elizabeth Lescaze.

Curtis and the restaurant’s other owner, Christopher A. Lutes, already run four other Boston-area restaurants: Cambridge 1, which has one location in Harvard Square and another at Fenway, Middlesex Lounge, Audobon Circle, and Miracle of Science.

“They have a very successful formula,” said Denise A. Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association. “We’re confident that this will also be a very popular location.”

Tory Row was originally scheduled to open last November, after Curtis and Lutes signed a lease with Getz that fall.

“The owners have been paying rent all along, but they have very high standards around the place’s design and concept,” Jillson said. “So this has all been prolonged.”

Tory Row was a former nickname of Brattle Street, where many loyalists lived during the American Revolution.

“It’s a great space and we’re all anxious for it to open,” Jillson said of Tory Row’s location. “I think it will add a whole new level of street life to a corner that badly needs it.”

Curtis and Lutes, who are known for their unusual, design-centric bars and grills, opened their first restaurant in Cambridge, Miracle of Science, next to MIT in 1991. —Staff writer Shan Wang can be reached at wang38@fas.harvard.edu.