On a stretch of East Houston Street nicknamed “Goulash Row” for its Hungarian restaurants was a place called Little Hungary, an improbable haunt of the city’s elite and tourists in the pre-Prohibition city.
Little Hungary featured “the atmosphere of Budapest, of gay nights on the Danube, of the Rhapsodies of Liszt” as well as goulash handed out as part of a free lunch with an order of glass of beer, wrote the New York Times.
Little Hungary hosted a wild and festive dinner for Teddy Roosevelt in 1905, after he won the presidency a year earlier. The Eighteenth Amendment in 1920, however, put an end to the place.
[Postcard: 1910, MCNY]
Tags: dining in NYC Gilded Age, Houston Street, Hungarians in NYC, Little Hungary Houston Street, Little Hungary New York City, New York City 1905, Teddy Roosevelt Little Hungary dinner
Ephemeral New York 
June 30, 2016 at 1:49 pm |
nothing Hungarian exits in New York anymore
July 2, 2016 at 9:15 pm |
Way uptown there’s the Hungarian Pastry Shop: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hungarian-pastry-shop-new-york
July 3, 2016 at 11:53 am
I remember that Hungarian Restaurant from my first visit to the Cathedral back in the early nineties. I wonder if it has the same owner?
July 1, 2016 at 2:03 am |
I have written up something about Little Hungary a few years ago here:
https://norfolkstreetarchives.com/2013/02/18/teddy-roosevelt/
July 6, 2016 at 2:27 pm |
[…] a popular spot that postcards were sold featuring scenes of their renowned dinners (the fantastic Emphemeral New York blog recently posted an image of one, which is where I first learned of the restaurant and Goulash Row). And aside from offering the […]
February 26, 2021 at 10:56 am |
[…] a popular spot that postcards were sold featuring scenes of their renowned dinners (the fantastic Emphemeral New York blog recently posted an image of one, which is where I first learned of the restaurant and Goulash Row). And aside from offering the […]
May 7, 2021 at 3:27 pm |
Does anyone know where this postcard is from? How one might access the image?
May 7, 2021 at 5:43 pm |
Hi DC, the postcard is part of the collection of the Museum of the City of New York and is available digitally via their website.