Gaslight Cafe
116 MacDougal Street | Greenwich Village | built 1884
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1958
John Mitchell opens the Gaslight Cafe as a basket house
Founder John Mitchell opens the Gaslight at 116 MacDougal Street as a basket house, where unpaid performers pass around a basket hoping for tips instead of a set fee. The room first showcases Beat poets including Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso before shifting toward folk music.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1960
Mike Wallace films a television special on the Beats in the cafe
On May 15, 1960, the broadcast journalist Mike Wallace came to the Gaslight to shoot a TV special on the Beat Generation, recording poets who read in the basement, among them Hugh Romney, later known as Wavy Gravy. The cafe was by then starting to mix folk musicians in between the poets' readings, though not every listener welcomed the change.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1960
Fire inspectors try to close the cafe, and owner John Mitchell is arrested
In June 1960 owner John Mitchell was arrested on disorderly conduct and assault charges as fire officials arrived to shut the Gaslight over alleged safety violations. The city had spent over a year cracking down on 34 Village espresso parlors, and patrons yelled accusations of graft at the inspectors, since Mitchell had stopped paying the customary bribes and hired attorney Ed Koch. Hugh Romney joined a sit-in, but the cafe stayed shut for three months.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1961
Reverend Gary Davis marries Hugh Romney in the cafe, using a children's book
On July 10, 1961, the Gaslight was the setting for Hugh Romney's wedding, with the blind blues guitarist Reverend Gary Davis presiding and Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk among the guests. Davis insisted the couple stand on a wooden board, fearing their children would be born mad if they married on the stone floor, and he performed the rite from a copy of Peter Rabbit that he had brought by mistake instead of a Bible.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1962
Bob Dylan is taped at the Gaslight
A recording of Dylan's set at this basement coffeehouse, a center of the Village folk revival, was released decades later as Live at The Gaslight 1962.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1962
Bob Dylan writes a poem on a typewriter above the cafe, then sings 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall'
According to a history of the cafe, Dylan wrote a three-page poem on Hugh Romney's typewriter in 1962 in the room above the Gaslight and showed it to Tom Paxton. Paxton told him it was wonderful and that he should put a tune to it. The following late night he performed the seven-minute "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" at the cafe for the first time.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1971
The Gaslight Cafe closes for good
After changing owners several times through the 1960s and hosting performers from Bob Dylan to Jimi Hendrix, the Gaslight Cafe closes permanently, ending its run as one of Greenwich Village's central folk and beat music venues.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1975
The former Gaslight space becomes a lesbian bar called El Cafe
In 1975 the space at 116 MacDougal Street changed hands again and opened as El Cafe, a lesbian bar. The room had earlier been Louis' Luncheon, popular in the 1930s and 1940s with gay men, lesbians, writers and chorus girls, before the Gaslight Cafe took its place and hosted Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso.
Source: Village Preservation
Further reading
- The Gaslight CafeWikipedia
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