Veselka
144 2nd Avenue | also 300 East 9th Street | East Village | built 1920
Open on the map11 entries
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.
- 1884
Coroner Michael Messemer moves out of the townhouse on this lot, and a crowd watches his specimens leave
Before the present building, a townhouse stood at 144 Second Avenue. One of its residents was Dr. Michael J. Messemer, a physician and coroner with ties to the German Democratic party, while his brother Dr. Edward J. Messemer stayed on in the house with his family. When Michael moved down the street in 1884, the newspapers described the crowd that gathered as a cart carried off skeletons of a human, a horse and a monkey, along with animals from his medical experiments, among them a dog without a spleen and a pigeon that, having lost part of its brain, kept flying the wrong way. This was an earlier building on the site.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1914
The Menschel brothers replace the townhouse with a three-story building holding the 595-seat Casino Theatre
Philip and Benjamin Menschel, Austrian-born brothers who had leased the property, applied in 1914 to demolish the old townhouse and put up a commercial building. Its centerpiece was a movie house of 595 seats across the first and second floors, the Casino Theatre, one of at least six cinemas on lower Second Avenue. By 1928 the brothers had renovated it from top to bottom, trading the theater for shops, offices, classrooms and a billiards parlor.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1937
A holdup of the all-night Cafe Boulevard upstairs ends with Detective Michael Foley fatally shot
On the second floor was Cafe Boulevard, a downscale all-night restaurant nicknamed the Dutchman. After robbers took $3,600 there in March, the owner, Sam Kupperstein, asked police to keep watch. A little after 3 a.m. on April 10, four men held up the place while two plainclothes detectives were inside. The detectives and the robbers exchanged gunfire, and Detective Michael Foley was shot and died of his wounds. The robbers became known as the East Side Boys.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1954
Wlodymyr Darmochwal rents a small storefront and opens Veselka, selling candy, cigarettes and Ukrainian newspapers
After World War II, Ukrainian refugees began arriving in the neighborhood, and in 1954 Darmochwal rented a small storefront here and named it Veselka, the Ukrainian word for rainbow. He sold candy, cigarettes and Ukrainian-language newspapers. Upstairs, Plast, the Ukrainian scouting organization, kept an office on the third floor. A steak restaurant next door later gave way to a lunch counter, where a few Polish and Ukrainian women took orders, cooked and served the pierogi.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1962
Isidore Zimmerman walks free after 24 years, having been accused of supplying a gun for the Cafe Boulevard holdup
Zimmerman was not at the restaurant on the night of the 1937 holdup; his accomplices accused him of supplying a pistol. Six men were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, and Governor Herbert Lehman commuted Zimmerman's sentence only hours before it was to be carried out. He kept insisting he was innocent, and in 1962 his lawyer proved the testimony against him false. After 24 years of wrongful imprisonment he was freed, and in 1983 he was awarded $1 million.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1964
The Plast Foundation buys the building for $67,500 and becomes Veselka's landlord
Ukrainian immigrants formed a U.S. chapter of Plast, a scouting organization, to protect their culture from assimilation, and the group had an office on the third floor of 144 Second Avenue. The Plast Foundation purchased the building and the land under it for $67,500 in 1964, which made the scouting group the landlord of the restaurant on the ground floor. As of 2015, Plast, Veselka and the toy shop Dinosaur Hill all still occupied the building.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1974
After Wlodymyr Darmochwal dies, son-in-law Tom Birchard takes over Veselka through the neighborhood's worst years
After Wlodymyr Darmochwal's death in 1974, the restaurant passed to his son-in-law Tom Birchard, just as the decade's crime epidemic set in. The phone booths became a place for dealing drugs, and a drug-addicted teenager robbed the restaurant several times. Construction of a Second Avenue subway station left the street and sidewalk dug up for years until the city abandoned the plan. To widen the customer base, Birchard hired a professional cook and added cheap new dishes, starting with a $2 breakfast special that included eggs, bacon, home fries, toast, coffee and juice.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 1983
Pamela Pier opens the handmade toy shop Dinosaur Hill in the same building
Pier opened her business in 1983, one of the only toy shops in the area at the time. The early years brought theft and graffiti, but the shop flourished. By the late 1980s it had moved to the East 9th Street side of the building and tripled its original space.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 2001
Veselka stays open after the September 11 attacks while the city asks local businesses to close
Tom Birchard and his son Jason had made Veselka a round-the-clock restaurant in 1990. After September 11, the city asked businesses in the area to shut, and Veselka kept its doors open anyway. Birchard recalled the room filling up with neighbors who came to talk and get over the shock, and he valued giving people a place to go.
Source: bedfordandbowery.com
- 2018
Anthony Bourdain films Danny Fields at Veselka for the last episode of Parts Unknown
For the final episode of his CNN series Parts Unknown, which aired in 2018, Anthony Bourdain sat down with the music publicist Danny Fields at Veselka. The restaurant had long drawn musicians, artists and actors, and it has also served as a filming location for movies and television series such as Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Ocean's 8.
“Anthony Bourdain filmed an interview with publicist Danny Fields at Veselka that appeared in the final episode of Parts Unknown on CNN in 2018.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2022
Veselka's daily crowds more than double after Russia invades Ukraine, and it collects supplies for refugees
After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, daily patronage at Veselka rose from 600 to 700 customers to about 1,500, as many visitors wanted to show support for Ukrainians. The restaurant, which Ukrainian refugees founded in 1954, also helped coordinate donations of supplies for Ukrainian refugees.
“After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Veselka's daily patronage more than doubled, from 600–700 to 1,500…”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- VeselkaWikipedia
- 144 Second AvenueVillage Preservation: East Village Building Blocks
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