The 212 column revisits New York institutions that have helped define the city, from time-honored restaurants to unsung dives.

On West 36th Street, a few blocks from the clamor of Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, a brown awning with white lettering beckons diners into Keens Steakhouse, where New York history is served up along with lavish slabs of U.S.D.A. prime beef, arguably the best in town. There’s also the famous mutton chop, big as your arm, Keens’s signature dish since 1885, when the restaurant first opened its doors.

New York was well ensconced in the Gilded Age when Albert Keen, a producer who ran the Lambs Club, a hangout for theater folk, set up his namesake restaurant (originally called Keen’s English Chop House) in the middle of Manhattan. It too was frequented by thespians, writers and composers, many of whom worked nearby. The Garrick Theatre was one block over, and I like to imagine William Gillette, a celebrated Sherlock Holmes, arriving in full deerstalker for his chop and mug of ale.

In 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City; the first New York headquarters of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company was constructed in Lower Manhattan; and New York native Theodore Roosevelt published “Hunting Trips of a Ranchman,” a chronicle of his time in the Dakota Territory. A decade later, Roosevelt became the city’s police commissioner. The white clay churchwarden pipe he smoked at Keens is on display in the restaurant’s front hall near the maître d’s stand, along with pipes smoked by other regular patrons, including “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Babe Ruth. (The collection runs to about 90,000, many of them hanging from the ceiling of the main dining room.) Too delicate to travel, the pipes reserved for members of Keens’s Pipe Club were stored at the restaurant so that when a customer returned, his or her — Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Liza Minnelli have been honorary members — pipe was delivered to the table.