The Iron Gate Club - 212 West 71st Street

In April 1891 architect George Fred Pelham filed plans for seven "three-story and basement stone dwellings" on the south side of West 71st Street, between Amsterdam and West End Avenues for developers Edelmeyer & Morgan.  Each house was projected to cost $12,000, or about $322,000 today.

Completed in 1892, Pelham had designed them in a restrained version of Romanesque Revival.  Stretching from No. 212 to 224, it appears their mostly subtle differences were arranged in an A-B-C-D-C-B-A arrangement.

No. 212, at the eastern end of the row, was originally identical to No. 224, seen here at the far right.  photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library

The last of the houses was sold by Edelmeyer & Morgan in October 1892.  The $24,000 price for each doubled the developers' investment.  No. 212 was purchased by attorney Eugene Van Schaick and his wife, the former Sarah Howland.

The couple had been married six years when they moved into the house.  Sarah, apparently not content to sit at home, dabbled in real estate.   The same month that they bought No. 212, Sarah sold the three houses at Nos. 152, 154 and 160 West 65th Street to George Moore.  The lucrative contract totaled $83,450; about $2.25 million today.

When John W. Merriam and his wife, Louise, purchased the house in 1905, it was assessed at $21,000.  John was the principal in Merriam Segars, Inc.  The title was put in the name of Louise, and she immediately set out to made significant changes.

On September 22 that year architect Carlton Strong filed plans for $12,000 in alterations.  In part, they included "new plumbing, tubs, entrance and rear addition."   The new entrance mentioned in the plans involved removing the brownstone stoop and lowering the doorway to the former English basement level, a few steps below sidewalk level.   Based on the extent of the renovations--equaling a third of a million dollars today--it was doubtless that at this time the projecting bay with its tiny panes and stained glass insets was installed.  The upper two floors remained unchanged.

Small leaded insets added decoration to the grid of small panes.

The new "tubs," plural, suggest that the Merriams intended to operate a rooming house here.  And, in fact, although the couple continued to live here, when they sold No. 212 in December 1915 to the Ellay Realty Co. it was termed a "tenement."

Five years later Prohibition was enacted.  New York City saw the emergence of speakeasies, many of them elegant night clubs patronized by the wealthy and powerful.  Official estimates placed the number of illegal drinking establishments in the city at an astonishing 20,000 to 100,000.  Some, like the Puncheon club on 49th Street, were protected by high, substantial iron fencing that slowed down raiding agents.  (The Puncheon's handsome fencing survives in front of The 21 Club on West 52nd Street in Midtown.)

Before long a similar fence, around six feet tall, surrounded the areaway of No. 212 West 71st Street.  Now owned by William Kemp Kay, the house had been remodeled into a swanky nightclub, the Iron Gate.  The New York Times described the layout, saying "The basement is used as a kitchen, the first floor has a dance floor, foyer and bar; the second a lounging room and woman's bar, the third floor booths and the fourth a storeroom."

No small affair, the Iron Gate employed 20 hostesses per shift in 1932, as well as musicians, dancers, chefs and others.  Dorothy McCoy and Anita Corbin worked at the Iron Gate that year.  The last thing proprietors of speakeasies wanted was publicity; so William Kemp Kay was no doubt annoyed when the women, both 22-years old, were arrested on September 12 that year.   Described by The New York Times as "two night club dancers," the women had been in the automobile of Harvey Lyons on August 25 when it plowed into a group of children in New Jersey.

Several children were injured and 8-year old Dorothy Balamie died.  At the time Lyons was arrested; but, according to the newspaper "asserted that one of the dancers was at the wheel at the time.  Both denied having driven the automobile."

It may have been that tragic incident that drew federal interest to West 71st Street.  On December 23 six undercover prohibition agents posed as customers.  Once served, they flashed their badges and arrested Kay, his manager, the bartender, Joseph Parroti, and two waiters, Leo Alfond and Leo Weisslitz.  Fifty bottles of liquor were confiscated.  The Times reported "a capacity crowd of guests were not disturbed.

Agents told reporters that the furnishings in the high-end club were worth $50,000, more than $865,000 in today's dollars.

It appears it was not Prohibition, but the disgruntled neighbors who brought an end to the Iron Gate.  On October 3, 1935 The New York Times reported "The Iron Gate, a restaurant and bar at 212 West Seventy-first Street, said to have been a favorite resort of former Mayor James J. Walker, was the object of the action brought by the Neighborhood League for Noise Prevention."

Dr. Maurice D. Pitney, a psychotherapist who lived at No. 220 West 71st Street, had had enough.  He told reporters that loud music and singing, mainly "Hawaiian," blared from the Iron Gate "from 8 P.M. to 4 or 5 in the morning," making sleep impossible for him and his neighbors.  A meeting was held in the home of Mrs. Madge Stover, next door to the nightclub at No. 210, and a protest petition was started. 

The Iron Gate was by now run by Arthur W. Kemp, possibly William's son or brother.  He was slapped with a summons for maintaining a public nuisance.  It was apparently death knell for the Iron Gate.  A little over a month after the neighbors revolted, No. 212 was sold to insurance broker Leo Salomon "for investment."  In reporting the sale, The Times noted "The building is now vacant."

Salomon formed the 212 West Seventy-First Street Corp. and maintained the property for about two decades.  In stark contrast to the rowdy nightlife during the Iron Gate years, the house was now occupied by at least two vocal studios.

Carl A. Yost trained classical vocalists here during the 1930s and early 40's.  Among his star students was composer and baritone Elmo Russ.  Yost regular staged recitals in his studio and Russ was perhaps his most frequent performer.  In 1939, for instance, The Musician reported, "In the highly atmospheric and appropriate setting of Carl A. Yost's Studio, Elmo Russ, vividly gifted composer-baritone, presented another of his diverting programs on June 1st, offering lyrics by Edna St. Vincent Millay."

Another voice teacher, Mario Rubini-Reichlin, had his studio here for years.  Born in Vienna, he had been professor of piano at the Vienna Conservatory of Music and a concert pianist in Austria until the Nazis came to power.  He fled to America, taking up the profession of a voice coach.  He died at the age of 70 on October 7, 1968.

By then No. 212 had been renovated to a single apartment on the ground floor and two each on the upper floors for a decade.  In 1995 it was purchased by Dr. Moshe M. Rothkopf and his wife, Ziporah.  The former basement level was converted for Dr. Rothkopf's medical practice in 1998.

The brownstone has been painted white and Pelham's carved Romanesque elements picked out in a garish gold; possibly a legacy from the 1930s nightclub.  Nevertheless, Carl Strong's interesting 1905 bay makes No. 212 a standout on the block.  And the tall iron fence, an attempt to foil Prohibition agents, survives.

photographs by the author

James Clare's Saloon -- No. 626 11th Avenue

The sparsely developed district on Manhattan’s West Side would forever change when the Hudson River Railroad laid tracks up Eleventh Avenue in 1849.  Quickly industries developed that could take advantage of the new transportation—tanneries, breweries, and riverfront businesses.  The neighborhood filled with impoverished immigrants, many of them Irish, drawn by employment and cheap housing.

With the increasing population came a need for small groceries, cobbler and pottery shops.  The hard-working residents were equally hard drinking; as were the rough-edged sailors.   James Clare’s saloon, diplomatically described by The New York Times in 1866 as a “liquor store and grocery,” appeared at the corner of Eleventh Avenue and 46^th Street around the time of the Civil War.

The saloon at No. 626 Eleventh Avenue filled the ground floor of the three story vernacular structure.  Clad in red brick, the building was 25 feet wide and stretched 76 feet down 46^th Street.  Lodgers rented rooms in the upper floors, accessed by a side door at No. 554 West 46^th Street.  James Clare also lived here above his saloon.

Clare’s customers were little concerned with decorum and when five men arrived at the saloon at 10:00 on Sunday, July 15, 1866, a locked door did not dissuade them.  They simply banged on the doors until Clare opened up for them.  He would regret accommodating the men.

The New York Times reported two days later, “Clare opened the door and gave them drinks, after which he was about giving them some segars, when one of the party threw a large stone at him, cutting him on the head and causing a terrible wound.  The stone glanced from the man’s head and struck a mirror behind the bar, smashing it into fragments.”

Before James Clare could react, he was attacked again.  “Not content with this, another of the ruffianly gang threw a second stone at Clare, but it fortunately missed him.”

Saloon keepers in the neighborhood that would earn the name Hell’s Kitchen were as tough as their customers.  Clare grabbed an ice pick and thrust it into the shoulder of Thomas Comey, causing a severe wound.  “This defence had the effect of making the rowdies run off, when Clare shut up shop and summoned a doctor,” said the newspaper.

While the doctor was attending to Clare’s head wound, Comey went to the 47^th Street police station and filed a complaint against him for assault.  Officer Corey arrived at the Clare’s saloon and took him to the police station.  There, Clare filed a charge against Comey.  They were both arrested and held for trial.

Among the Irish lodgers upstairs in 1867 was Bernard Donahue, listed in the City Directory for New York as “laborer.”  By 1870 John P. Kinney had taken over Clare’s saloon.  Like his predecessor, he lived upstairs.   But his tenure here would be short-lived.  In 1872 directories noted that John McCrystal was running the saloon and living overhead.   McCrystal would run the operation at least until 1878.

While the patrons John McCrystal dealt with were profane and dangerous; he was most likely little different.  Survival in Hell’s Kitchen required a saloon owner to be rough and, at least, borderline criminal.  In 1881 The New York Times described the area as “one of the most miserable and crime-polluted neighborhoods in this City,” adding “there is more disease, crime, squalor, and vice to the square in this part of New-York.”

Within a few weeks it would add “the entire locality is probably the lowest and filthiest in the City, a locality where law and order are openly defied, where might makes right, and depravity revels riotously in squalor and reeking filth.”

In the mid-1880s Louis Brengel was operating the saloon.  He preferred to list himself in business directories as a “Segar Dealer.”  Upstairs, in 1887, lived Richard J. Whalen whose physicality caused problems that year.

On December 29 Whalen visited the “club room” run by Edward Martin.  Such facilities were the Victorian version of today’s gyms.  Here men could box, use punching bags and Indian clubs, and release stress while keeping fit.  That afternoon Whalen got into a wrestling match with Albert J. Butler.

Butler did not survive the match.

Coroner Levy held an inquest on January 3, 1888 to look into the death.  Although the testimonies of Hell’s Kitchen cronies were always suspect, The Sun reported “a number of witnesses swore that Butler received his injuries accidentally.”   The Coroner seems to have been only partially convinced.  He “paroled Whalen on his own recognizance.”

In the years just prior to America’s entrance into World War I Patrick P. Prunty was operating the saloon.  It is most likely no coincidence that the last directory listing for him here is in 1917.  Prunty very likely saw the darkening clouds for liquor dealers as Congress passed a resolution to amend the Constitution to accomplish nationwide Prohibition.

No. 626 Eleventh Avenue became Carley’s Saloon, owned by Patrick Henry Carley.  Although it remained opened for some time as a speakeasy and was reportedly a favorite of film actor George Raft who grew up in the neighborhood; Prohibition agents eventually closed down Carley’s Saloon and it sat boarded up for years.

In 1930 (above) the bar is boarded up.  The photographer wrote on the reverse "showing Carley's Saloon, closed by prohibition."  Six years later (below) the saloon was back in business.  The tenement buildings to the right have been demolished and the lot remains vacant today.  photos from the collection of the New York Public Library.

But not long after Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the old bar at No. 626 Eleventh Avenue reopened.   The freight trains had continued to run up the middle of the avenue until about 1930.  The Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood did not see significant improvement until the latter part of the century.

A locomotive chugs up the avenue nearby at 40th Street in 1930 -- photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New Yorkhttp://collections.mcny.org/Collection/A%20Manhattan%20Street%20Corner.%20[Corner%20of%2041st%20Street%20and%2011th%20Avenue.]-2F3XC5I6J06N.html  

In 1989 the building was converted to “eating and drinking” on the first floor and the upper floors, where criminals, sailors and prostitutes once rented rooms, were converted to dining rooms for the restaurant below.  The Landmark Tavern briefly closed in 2004; but was reopened a year later by Michael Young and Donnchadh O’Sullivan.  Despite its inconvenient location, they refurbished the mahogany paneling, the mosaic floors, the tin ceilings and the massive one-piece wooden bar. 

 

photo thelandmarktavern.org/

Where “ruffians” shattered the barroom mirror with a rock in 1866, patrons now dine on Scotch eggs and Egyptian Dukka-crusted halibut.   The lonely survivor of Hell’s Kitchen’s less grittiest days sits little changed on a more industrial Eleventh Avenue.

non-credited photographs taken by the author

Prohibition Headquarters - Nos. 45-47 West 27th Street

Although its core was Beaux Arts; the design took on burly turn-of-the-century motifs like pilasters in the form of fasces and a chunky parapet -- photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

In the years just following the end of the Civil War, the neighborhood around West 27^th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues was a respectable residential one.   In 1870 “The Gentleman’s Directory” made note of the boarding house at No. 45 West 27^th Street, saying it “is presided over by Jenny Mitchell, a very agreeable and entertaining lady, who has four highly accomplished young lady boarders.”  It called it “a first class house” with “elaborate furnishings.”

As the turn of the century neared, however, the area had decidedly changed.  Sitting on the western edge of the notorious Tenderloin District, it filled with brothels, gambling houses and saloons in the 1890s.  It was perhaps just that reputation that prompted the French Church of St. Esprit to purchase both houses at Nos. 45 and 47 for $59,000 in March 1899.  The church continued to operate the buildings as rooming houses; no doubt with a strict eye on who boarded there.

Change came again to the neighborhood in the first years of the 20^th century.  Prompted by aggressive police crack-downs on illegal businesses and by the northward movement of the commercial and entertainment districts, the shoddy old hotels and antiquated houses were being replaced with up-to-date business buildings.

In 1910 Architecture and Building News reported that the two houses at Nos 45 and 47 had been replaced with “a building,” the architect of which was H. T. J. Fuehrmann.   Henry Fuehrmann had been chosen by the Manhattan Office Building Co. in 1909 to design a 12-story loft and retail store structure on the site of the old houses. 

Fuehrmann’s completed structure was a no-nonsense business building of buff-colored brick with limestone trim.  The vaguely Beaux Arts styled structure included a Greek key bandcourse above the two-story second granite and cast iron base, and terra cotta ornament at the bases of the long piers that hinted at Viennese Secessionist influence.

photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

As the Garment District crept northward the building filled with a number of apparel firms.  In 1913 Schroeder & Co., manufacturers of “juvenile dresses,” took an entire floor.  Also in the building were the Irene Underwear Co.; Rudinsky Cloak and Suit Co.; Karl Light, makers of cloaks and suits; and H. D. Fertel, “coats, neckwear and muffs.”

But more importantly, with the enactment of the Volstead Act, the building became Prohibition Enforcement Headquarters.   Prohibition agents made few friends in the underworld and his profession brought a violent and sudden end to the life of agent James F. McGuinness.

On Christmas Eve 1920 McGuinness’s body was found in shallow water in Newark Bay “with a bullet through his head,” according to the Bisbee Arizona’s Daily Review.  The newspaper said he “committed suicide, police [in Bayonne, New Jersey] stated tonight.  The family of the dead man, who was a prohibition enforcement officer, believe that he was murdered.”

Indeed Mrs. McGuinness’s cousin, Joseph P. Tumulty who happened to be secretary to President Wilson, told reporters “I am certain from the information now at hand that McGuinness met with foul play.  Every fact of his home life negatives any other idea.”

McGuinness was found with a 38-calibre Colt revolver in his hand; but at the 27^th Street headquarters, S. M. Sewell, acting enforcement supervisor said it was definitely not the weapon the agent used in his work.  Mrs. McGuinness “substantiated this by saying that the gun which he carried in his work was in his drawer at home,” said the New-York Tribune.

A neighbor, James C. O’Neill, who was connected with the bureau of investigation with the Department of Justice spoke of a “dark stranger, about five feet eight inches in height” who went to the McGuinness home the night of the agent’s death.  O’Neill said “there were men who had become his enemies through his refusal to aid them in evading the prohibition act.”

“I think that Mr. McGuinness was killed in an automobile in New York and his body taken to Bayonne and stretched out at the edge of the bay,” opined O’Neill.  “That gun might have been placed in his hand also.  I know that he was a happy man, in good health, without anything to lead him to suicide.  He had money enough too, because he was getting his wife a seal-skin coat for $200 and had bought $40 worth of toys for his children.”

McGuinness was in charge of about 150 agents and had recently been made chief of a squad of about 20 men. 

That the Prohibition Headquarters was in the neighborhood which, only two decades earlier, had been the center of vice and crime in New York City was ironic.  The agents worked tirelessly to rid the city of illegal saloons and clubs.  On December 7, 1921 the New-York Tribune noted “Raids of well known resorts where liquor is said to be sold along Broadway will continue until the district is bone dry, according to a statement yesterday by Chief Enforcement Agent R. Q. Merrick.”

On the day prior to the article, more than twenty raids had been executed.   Arrests were not always confined to drinking establishments.  “On Sixth Avenue near prohibition headquarters, 47 West Twenty-seventh Street, agents arrested Lee A. Williams, a negro driver.  He had a barrel of real beer on his truck, they say.  The beer and truck were seized."  The enterprising man operated a sort of mobile saloon.  "Williams said he was working for himself and that his office was on his truck.”

A month earlier the headquarters was the scene of a string of suspicious robberies that the New-York Tribune hinted could be an inside job.  “A systematic robbery, said to have  been continued under the administration of three prohibition directors, of important documents and records from the prohibition enforcement headquarters at 47 West Twenty-seventh Street...Many of the records stolen are reported to have been necessary to prosecute certain cases now pending in Federal courts.”

The Headquarters was also responsible for controlling illegal narcotics.  In September 1921 Giovanni Ceppellaro was suspected of drug trafficking.  Armed with a search and seizure warrant, agents raided his office on Mulberry Street where they found a large safe made of wood and camouflaged to look like iron with a coating of shoe polish.  In the safe were paper bags containing $20,000 worth of drugs and $50,000 in jewelry.

Organized crime battled the agents as fervently as the agents battled them.  In January 1922 it was discovered that the telephone trunk leading into the switchboard at the Prohibition Headquarters had been tapped for months.  “Bootleg or other interests, it developed, have been in a position to hear all conversations of prohibition officials and enforcement officers,” reported the New-York Tribune.  “This may account for mysterious ‘tips’ which have reached big concerns about to be raided.”

With amazing nerve, the criminals listening in to the agents had set up their office in the same building--possibly even using the government's own instruments.  “Indications are that the listening-in station was on some floor below,” said the newspaper.  One telephone was missing from headquarters, as well.  “In checking up the telephone instruments assigned to headquarters the lineman found himself one instrument short.  No one could account for the missing telephone.”

photo Nicolas Lemery Nantel / salokin.com

On December 5, 1933 the 21^st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified and Prohibition was suddenly history.  It was the end of the line for the State Headquarters of Prohibition, as well.  The exciting period at No. 45-47 West 27^th Street was over.  For the rest of the century the building housed apparel and novelty firms and drew little attention to itself.  Today, although retail stores have been gouged into the street level, the old building where “dry agents” fought bootleggers is little changed above the first floor. 

The 1834 House at No. 139 West 10th Street

By 1834 Greenwich Village was quickly developing into a vibrant community.  That year Myndert Van Schaick constructed a row of eleven brick-faced homes along the northern side of West 10^th Street between Greenwich Avenue and Waverly Place.

The well-connected Van Schaick was the son of General Goose Van Schaick and Maria Ten Broeck Van Schaick.  In 1815 he married Elizabeth Hone, the niece of Philip Hone.  By now he had become a member of the New York State Assembly and an Alderman of New York City; and was currently a member of the New York State Senate.

Van Schaick’s row of houses were built in the familiar Federal style with touches of the newly-emerging Greek Revival.  Among them was No. 149, a matching red brick, three-story home above a brownstone basement.   The stone stoop led to an elegant entranceway.  Fluted columns flanked the doorway, and detailed carving—dentil molding, delicate rope trim and pierced carving—embellished the areaway. 

Elegant details like the delicate rope molding; crisp, fluted columns and complex, skinny side panels reflected the extra expense lavished on the entrance.

Ida Earl lived in the house in the 1850s, followed by the Simms family in the following decade.  Mary E. Simms owned the house in 1860, and her sister, Anna L. Fountain, and brother Augustus L. Simms, lived here as well.  Anna was a teacher in the Primary Department of School No. 16 on West 13^th Street.  Augustus was employed as a sign painter.

Nearby at No. 370 Bleecker Street lived James Anderson and his family.  Anderson was tailor and sexton of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church on Seventh Avenue.  In 1860 his daughter, Clementina, met Augustus Simms.  It was the beginning of a love affair and a tragedy.

For nearly a year and a half Augustus called on Clementina at the family house.  Newspapers would later describe her as “a handsome and accomplished girl.”  But when tensions grew between Augustus and John Anderson, the young man visited Clementina only when he was certain her father was away.   Then, during the first week of July 1861, Clementina gave Augustus shocking and disturbing news:  she was pregnant.

He would later testify in court “At the same time she requested me to procure some pills for the purpose, as she alleged, to produce an abortion.  I asked her what kind she wanted; she said there were three or four kinds advertised, that Hooper’s pills were the best; as she had known of a married woman who had tried them.”

Augustus brought the pills, but they failed to work.  A panicked Clementina insisted that something else must be done “that her folks must not know it.”  Augustus Simms called on Dr. Edward M. Browne who, it was rumored, took care of such indelicate problems.

To make matters worse, as Augustus and Dr. Browne negotiated for weeks, Clementina’s mother died.   Simms attended the funeral and James Anderson noticed “that an intimacy still existed between him and my daughter.”

By now Clementina was showing.  Her father asked her if she were pregnant and did she intend to marry Simms.  Twice she denied the pregnancy, although her father insisted she should not be ashamed.

“I told her to reveal her mind to me, that I was father and mother to her; she made me no answer, and we parted; that was the last conversation I had with her upon the subject,” her father later recalled.

Finally on October 26 at 8:00 pm Clementina sneaked out of the Bleecker Street house while her father was out, leaving word that she was going to Newburgh, New York.  Instead Augustus took her to Dr. Browne’s house at No. 82 Eighth Avenue.

Browne performed two operations the following day.  Seemingly successful at first, Clementina slipped into what appears, by a 21^st century perspective, to have been a serious state of infection.   On the 19^th of November Dr. Browne sent a message that Clementina was ready to go home.  Simms procured a carriage for $1 and Browne’s housekeeper, Eliza Gordon, helped him get her into the vehicle.

When they pulled up to the Anderson house on Bleecker Street, the driver and the housekeeper took Clementina in.  She collapsed on a sofa in the hallway and, moments later, was dead.

Augustus was arrested on November 24.  A reporter in the station house said he “had the appearance of a man suffering under acute bodily pain, united with deep anxiety and great sorrow.”

The newspapers followed the scandalous story for months, recounting every testimony that could decorously be printed.   The New York Times noted on November 26, 1862 that “Much of it is entirely unfit for publication.”  The case, according to the newspaper, “created the utmost excitement in the City at the time.”

The name of the Simms family, including the innocent sisters, was tied to the sordid crime.  Eventually Dr. Browne was sentenced to three years in Sing Sing State Prison, the jury concluding that “Clementina Anderson came to her death by inflammation, produced by an abortion at the hands of Dr. Edward, M. Brown,” and further “the Jury say that Augustus L. Simms was accessory before and after the fact.”

As an interesting side note, a decade later, having served his term, Dr. Browne was back, practicing and living at No. 251 William Street.   When Sanford Murray, a bill collector from the New-York Gas Company, came to his door early in April 1873, Dr. Browne made “a desperate attempt to murder” him, according to The New York Times.   The newspaper ran the headline on April 17, 1873, “The William-Street Outrage.  Dr. Brown Committed—He Proves to be a Noted Criminal.”

In the meantime, with Augustus out of the house in prison, Mary and Anna continued to live in the West 10^th Street house, leasing rooms to John J. Vanderoef.  John and his wife, Emcline, had a daughter, Mary Ella.  Tragedy struck when, on February 4, 1864, the 17-year old girl died in the house after a short illness.

By the turn of the century Greenwich Village was the home of artists, poets, writers and musicians—along with its various other residents.  The quaint, twisted streets became known for their many subterranean cafes and nightspots.  Many of the old homes were converted to bistros, restaurants and coffee shops.

The parlor floor of No. 139 West 10^th Street became home to Giovannis Renganeschi’s Restaurant.  The Italian eating spot would become a favorite with artists and writers and in 1908 its stock of wine and liquor was unparalleled in the Village.

Unfortunately Renganeschi’s had no liquor license.

On December 15, 1908 the restaurant was raided.  Police and federal agents hauled away 1,034 bottles of wine and liquor as well as six 50-gallon barrels of “red California.”  After sitting in Police Headquarters for three months, on March 29, 1909 the bottles were smashed and the casks and barrels broken open.  About $2,500 worth of alcohol flowed into the city drains.

“The Police Department laborers were more than an hour in destroying the wines, and by the time the last bottle was broken the open court reeked with the smell of intoxicants.  Several of the laborers said they felt partly intoxicated from smelling the stuff.  But not a bottle was spared,” reported The Times.

The Sun humorously added, “It was rumored at a late hour that there was danger of the fish in the Aquarium attempting to break jail in order to get their share of what was coming to the fish outside.”

Among the regulars at Renganeshi’s was artist John Sloan.  In 1912 he immortalized the restaurant in his “Renganeschi’s Saturday Night.”  John Butler Yeats, writing in The Seven Arts, spoke admiringly of the painting in 1917.  He noted that “In a picture, say the critics, there should be a point of fixity.  It is here furnished to us by the baldhead supping his soup.”  Yeats said of the painting that Sloan did not give satires of life, instead “he gives us his pictured comedies.”

John Sloan captured the atmophere of the restaurant in his 1912 "Renganeschi's Saturday Night." -- from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

Federal agents were back at No. 139 West 10^th Street on July 24, 1930.  Prohibition had been in effect for a decade when the restaurant was raided and “fifty bottles described as assorted liquor were taken,” said The Times, along with two prisoners.  Two years later, on June 14, the restaurant, now known as John and Gene’s, was raided again by Federal “dry agents.”

Prohibition would finally pass away and patrons would happily get drunk once again.   At mid-century No. 139 housed a bar; still a familiar spot for local writers and artists.  In 1954 playwright Edward Albee  was drinking here and, according to his account in the Paris Review, he saw scrawled graffiti on a mirror that said “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

The line stuck in his brain and he later told the interviewer “When I started to write the play, it cropped up in my mind again.  And, of course, ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf’ means…who’s afraid of living life without false illusions.”

The wonderful Federal-style ironwork survives on the brownstone stoop.

In June 1957 Marxist and intellectual Myron Reed “Slim” Brundage opened a branch of his Chicago tavern College of Complexes at No. 139 West 10^th.   Within the year he was fined on a cabaret charge, the saloon would be seized by the IRS for back taxes.  In 1959 the Mafia threatened his waiters and bartenders with bodily harm if he did not pay at 25 percent protection fee.  Brundage refused and, instead, closed the bar.

Before long he was back up and running, just in time for the 1960 Presidential nominations.  Brundage sparked the idea of the Beatnik Party and its nominating convention was held at No. 139 West 10^th.  Bill Smith was nominated as “candidate for anti-president” and Joffre Stewart for “anti-vice-president.”

By the 1970s Greenwich Village was also the national center of the gay culture.  The space on the first floor became the Ninth Circle, a restaurant/bar that catered mainly to gay clientele.   However, even in the tolerant environment of Greenwich Village being gay in the 1970s could be dangerous.

In December 1979 the restaurant suffered a rash of assaults by youths who rushed into the establishment and roughed up employees and customers.  On New Year’s Eve 1979 The Times reported “The manager said one restaurant employe was injured Saturday night and another was injured Sunday along with several patrons who were knocked down when the youths rushed into the Ninth Circle around 5:30 P.M.”

The Ninth Circle was a fixture on West 10^th Street for nearly two decades, replaced around 1993 by Caffe Torino, an Italian-style restaurant that, too, served mostly gay clientele.  Today it is home to de Santos Italian restaurant.

At some point the parlor floor windows were extended to the floor; but on the whole the brick house at No. 139 West 10^th retains its 1834 charm.  And within its walls a wealth of social history has played out.

photographs taken by the author