The ForgottenBook cover was framed and hung during a book party in September 2006.Ĭhumley’s is accessed via a small passageway leading from Barrow Street called Pamela Court. You will find just about every big name in 20th Century literature here from Hemingway to Mailer to Ginsburg on the wall.Īnd mine, as well. The difference here is that the authors’ original dust jackets, and their portraits, line the walls of the place on all sides. By 1922, Leland Chumley had established a speakeasy/gambling den in the old building the tradition of not marking the entrance continues to this day.ĭuring and after Prohibition Chumley’s became one of NYC’s many literary hangouts. At length it became a gathering place for leftist radicals. According to legend, in the pre-Civil War era it was a stop where escaped slaves could find a haven (there was a black community on nearby Gay Street). Yet most Greenwich Villagers know where it is, officially 86 Bedford Street just north of Barrow, and most nights, it’s packed.Ĭhumley’s building dates to the 1830s and was originally a blacksmithery. Photos: Eric Weaver, except the one with Eric in it that was me.Į.e.cummings on mcsorley’s. he does use a few capital letters, now and then.Ĭhumley’s is probably the only major bar or restaurant in New York City that has never had a sign or marking of any sort on its exterior to mark its presence. But the old place still looks like a woman never set foot in it, until you look around and notice that women seem to be about 60% of the patronage. McSorley’s famously did not admit female patrons until the summer of 1970. At first the bathrooms were unisex until one of the kitchens was converted. The ones that came back removed their wishbones.
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The tradition dates to World War I when soldiers going off to war would hang them there. The coal-burning stove is still there, as is the safe, the rack of corncob pipes, and the dust-covered set of turkey wishbones hung on a light fixture. In Joseph Mitchell’s era, McSorley’s used four soup bowls for change in lieu of a cash register, one for pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. There are hundreds of pictures on the walls customers have brought them in throughout the decades, and the staff usually finds a place for them.
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The later opening date would negate claims that Abraham Lincoln stopped in when he gave a speech at Cooper Union in February 1860. Though McSorley’s claims it opened here on East 7th Street east of 3rd Avenue in 1854, NYC historian Richard McDermott’s research, employing old insurance maps, census data and tax-assessment records, indicates it opened in 1862. įorgotten Fans Jeff (of Streetlight Nuts fame), Rosaura, Eric and Nigey It has witnessed everything from the 1863 Draft Riots to the terrorist massacres of. McSorleys has been an East 7th Street institution since the Franklin Pierce (or Abraham Lincoln) administrations, depending on whose story you believe.
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We began our Forgotten NY bar tour on a bitterly cold February afternoon with temperatures in the teens and the impending Blizzard of 2003, which dropped 20″ of snow, quickly to follow, with visits to McSorley’s Old Ale House in the East Village and Chumley’s in the West Village.
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(Until recently I had a responsible job to go to). Not being a drunk, I’ve been in only a handful thus far. In 2003 I began a quest to visit the 14 oldest bars in NYC (according to Forgotten Fan Steve Radlauer, who wrote The Historic Shops and Restaurants of New York with Ellen Williams). But if Drudge ever looks for anything in my past, there’s nothing. I have been buzzed enough to wake up miles past my railroad station but never in a strange hotel room. One day, I decided I didn’t want to be drunk any more, and so, from then on, I have never been. I was drunk, but I was never a drunk I never came to depend on it. When I was young, though, I was frequently drunk. I have no past. No wild youth to be ashamed about now.