A Village speakeasy attracts a bohemian crowd

If you think New York packs in a lot of bars today, imagine what it was like in the 1920s.

During Prohibition, 32,000 speakeasies were operating in New York City, twice the number of legal saloons that existed in 1920.

Cousins Jack Kriendler and Charles E. Berns ran one of them: a little basement space called the Red Head, opened in 1923 off Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, then under the dark and grimy Sixth Avenue El.

“The Volstead Act had gone into effect in January 1920, so the illegal club in a tea room was an immediate hit,” states Dorothyparker.com.

After it was gutted by a fire, “the pair moved their speakeasy to a basement at 88 Washington Place at the height of the bootlegging, Jazz Age New York.

“Called the Fronton, it was now a real speakeasy, complete with live music and huge tables.”

Club Fronton had a Spanish theme and catered to artists and writers, such as Edna St. Vincent Millay (below) and Dorothy Parker (above), plus nightlife-loving politicians like Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Police raids didn’t close the Fronton down—eminent domain did. After a year, the property was condemned by the city so the West Fourth Street subway station could be built.

Kriendler and Berns moved to midtown this time. In 1928, they set up a speakeasy at 21 West 52nd Street. The 21 Club was an instant success—and 80 years after Prohibition, still packs them in.

[Above photo: 88 Washington Place today, a condominium residence]

Romany Marie’s bohemian cafes in the Village

If you were a struggling artist in the early 1900s, Romany Marie (left) was your ally.

Born in Moldavia, the former anarchist came to Greenwich Village in the early 1900s, when the neighborhood was gathering steam as a hotbed of radical politics and artistic creativity.

For the next several decades she ran a series of dimly lit tea rooms and taverns offering gypsy music, cheap eats, and a salon-like vibe where ideas flowed freely.

Oh, and she sometimes fed artists for free when they couldn’t afford a meal. No wonder she attracted such a devoted following of Village bohemians.

John Sloan’s famous sketch, “Romany Marye’s in Christopher Street, 1922” (above) was drawn at her 20 Christopher Street restaurant.

Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote her famous “my candle burns at both ends” line there.

Romany Marie also ran establishments at 15 Minetta Street, 49 Grove Street, and 64 Washington Square South at Thompson Street.

She died in 1961, when the Village still had its bohemian rep but was a very different place.

The Village Voice blog Runnin’ Scared reran her obituary here.

The tortoise and the hares on Park Avenue

1040 Park Avenue, at 86th Street, is a stately Upper East Side co-op. It doesn’t crack a smile—except when it comes to the tortoise and hare friezes that wrap around the third floor facade.

The penthouse was the longtime home of magazine publisher Conde Nast, who invited guests such as George Gershwin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edward Steichen for a housewarming party in 1925, a year after the building opened.

The narrowest house in Greenwich Village

Measuring only nine and a half feet wide, this circa-1873 stepped-gable home at 751/2 Bedford Street was at various times a carriage house, a cobbler’s shop, and part of a candy factory.

According to a 1993 New York Times article, the house sold for “less than $300,000” that year. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1923, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay lived there; she’s pictured below with her husband and a friend outside the house. The windows look the same (with a protective black fence added), but the wood-frame home on the left has been replaced. Bedford Street in the 1920s sure looks a little like a hick country road.