Pfaff's
40°43′36″N 73°59′45″W / 40.72675°N 73.99580°W
Pfaff's was a drinking establishment in Manhattan, New York City, known for its literary and artistic clientele.
Description
Opened in 1855 by Charles Ignatious Pfaff, the original Pfaff’s was modeled after the German
From the mid-1850s to the late 1860s, Pfaff’s was the center of New York’s revolutionary culture. As writer Allan Gurganus has said, "Pfaff’s was the Andy Warhol factory, the Studio 54, the Algonquin Round Table all rolled into one."[1]
Habitués included journalist and social critic
...The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet of Broadway...
Writer Fitz James O'Brien also wrote an ode to Pfaff's and to the clientele; an annotated copy of these lyrics titled At Pfaff's was pasted by Thomas Butler Gunn into his 1860 diary and can be seen at The Vault at Pfaff's website.[4]
Clapp, considered by many the "King of Bohemia", founded
In 1870, Charles Pfaff moved his business up to midtown. Whitman wrote about Pfaff’s in Specimen Days after a visit to the restaurateur's newer location many years later:
An hour’s fresh stimulation, coming down ten miles of
Manhattan Islandby railroad and 8 o’clock stage. Then an excellent breakfast at Pfaff’s restaurant, 24th Street. Our host himself, an old friend of mine, quickly appear’d on the scene to welcome me and bring up the news, and, first opening a big fat bottle of the best wine in the cellar, talk about ante-bellum times, '59 and '60, and the jovial suppers at his Broadway place, near Bleecker Street.Ah, the friends and names and frequenters, those times, that place. Most are dead - Ada Clare, Wilkins, Daisy Sheppard, O’Brien, Henry Clapp, Stanley, Mullin, Wood, Brougham, Arnold - all gone.
And there Pfaff and I, sitting opposite each other at the little table, gave a remembrance to them in a style they would have themselves fully confirm’d, namely, big, brimming, fill’d-up champagne-glasses, drain’d in abstracted silence, very leisurely, to the last drop."[3]
Current status
The original location at 653 Broadway eventually became an envelope factory. In 1975, it became a
In the spring of 2011, a restaurant and bar using the name The Vault at Pfaff's opened at 643 Broadway, near the original Pfaff's location. It too was accessed by descending a set of stairs, which led into a refurbished cellar.[5] The Vault at Pfaff's has since closed.
References
- ^ a b Gordus, Sara Oliver (July 2, 2010). "Walt Whitman's Watering Hole: Pfaff's Cellar, NYC". The Rumpus.net.
- ^ "Events. Upcoming: Original Bohemians in a New York Saloon. 'Rebel Souls'". Library of Congress Gazette. 26 (15): 2. April 27, 2015.
- ^ a b "Walt Whitman, America's 'First' Bohemian". Poetrybay. Winter 2003–2004.
- ^ "Works by Gunn, Thomas". The Vault at Pfaff's. Lehigh University. Retrieved 26 May 2023.
- ^ "The Vault at Pfaff's: a Historically Significant Date Spot in Noho". UrbanDaddy. April 20, 2011. Retrieved July 21, 2012.
Further reading
- Mark A. Lause (2009). The Antebellum Crisis & America's First Bohemians. Kent State University Press. ISBN 978-1-60635-033-1.
- ISBN 978-0-19-506548-0.
- Whitley, Edward; Weidman, Rob (eds.). "The Vault at Pfaff's – An Archive of Art and Literature by the Bohemians of Antebellum New York". Lehigh University Digital Library. Retrieved May 26, 2023.
- Martin, Justin (September 2, 2014). Rebel Souls: Walt Whitman and America's First Bohemians. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0-306-82226-1.
- "Whitman's New York". )
- Tucher, Andie (2006). "Reporting for Duty: The Bohemian Brigade, the Civil War, and the Social Construction of the Reporter". Book History. 9: 131–57. .