Bleecker Street Cinema
144 Bleecker Street | also 144A Bleecker Street | Greenwich Village | built 1831
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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.
- 1831
Developer Thomas E. Davis builds twin rowhouses on Bleecker Street
Thomas E. Davis erects a pair of fashionable rowhouses at 144 and 146 Bleecker Street, a block later renamed Carroll Place to attract wealthy buyers. Each 25-foot-wide home rises three and a half stories with an elegant Federal-style doorway, and a rear building holds a tea room and library.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1884
Placido Mori opens his restaurant in the former saloon space
Italian immigrant Placido Mori opens a restaurant in the ground-floor space of 144 Bleecker Street, later buying the building outright in 1910. Mori's becomes a fixture of bohemian and artistic Greenwich Village, prospering enough that Mori is able to buy a townhouse on Washington Square North in 1920.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1900
Anarchists protesting a banned Italian play adjourn to Mori & Lorenzi's cafe on Bleecker Street
In November 1900 authorities refused to let the play Senza Patria, written by the anarchist Pietro Gori, open, and angry crowds of Italians rebelled. The New York Times reported that the anarchists held an impromptu protest meeting on the sidewalk, and that several hundred of them then headed for Mori & Lorenzi's cafe at 144 Bleecker Street, picked as their gathering place. The cafe was already a hangout for labor and political groups: in 1891 a cloak makers' group, the Columbus Labor Club, had used it as its headquarters.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1920
Architect Raymond Hood merges the two Bleecker Street houses
After buying the adjoining building at 146 Bleecker Street, restaurateur Placido Mori hires architect Raymond Hood to combine both structures behind a single facade. Hood adds a row of Doric columns across the ground floor and a setback penthouse, giving the old rowhouses a unified, classical front.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1922
Seven Prohibition agents raid Mori's Restaurant and carry off liquor from a second-floor back room
On the afternoon of September 15, 1922, Prohibition Chief John D. Appleby sent seven agents to Mori's Restaurant. In a room at the rear of the second floor they seized a large quantity of liquor, wine and beer. According to the Times, the agents had never seen a sadder set of waiters than the staff who watched the famous wines being carried out of the dining room.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1923
Police raid Mori's again, arrest Placido Mori and find hundreds of bottles upstairs
A New York Times report of January 15, 1923 described another raid, only four months after the federal one. Police took 58 bottles of wine and ten of whisky and arrested Placido Mori. They then went up to the apartment of Louis Funai, where they carried away 18 bottles of champagne, 247 of wine, 15 of gin, four of kummel and a gallon of wine.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1928
Sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones, living upstairs, learns his Tomb of the Unknown Soldier design is accepted
When Placido Mori died in July 1927, the sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones was living upstairs at 144 Bleecker. Jones and the architect Lorimer Rich were jointly drawing up plans for the Arlington memorial to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He was still a resident in December 1928, when the Secretary of War, Dwight F. Davis, said the pair's design had been chosen.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1944
The Village Art Center shows more than a hundred works at Free World House
By 1944 the old Mori's building housed Free World House, run by the International Free World Association. On May 28, 1944, the Times reported that the Village Art Center's second open show was on view there, with more than a hundred works, oils, watercolors and drawings, by nearly as many artists. In early June the association announced a program of democratic principles for Europe, to take effect once the Allied armies invaded the continent.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1959
The Renata Theatre stages 'An Evening With Ethel Waters' among its last shows
In 1956 the building's lower two floors were remodeled as the Renata Theatre, a 250-seat house meant for contemporary European plays, with apartments and offices above. Among its last productions was An Evening With Ethel Waters, a one-person show that The New York Times called a musical memory on April 9, 1959. Within a year the space had been turned into the Bleecker Street Cinema.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1960
Filmmaker Lionel Rogosin opens the Bleecker Street Cinema
Lionel Rogosin, who had struggled to find distribution for his own film "Come Back, Africa," converts the ground floor into a 200-seat theater to show it and other films outside the studio system. The cinema grows into one of New York's key revival houses alongside the New Yorker and the Thalia, showcasing foreign and independent films for three decades.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1981
Bingham Ray begins his film career managing and programming the Bleecker Street Cinema
Sid Geffen purchased the cinema around 1973 or 1974, and he and his wife, Jackie Raynal, operated it; he bought the Carnegie Hall Cinema the same year. In 1981 Bingham Ray, later a co-founder of October Films and a United Artists executive, started there as a manager and programmer. Bruce Goldstein, who went on to program Film Forum, landed his earliest New York cinema position working for Geffen's two houses.
“Future October Films co-founder and United Artists studio executive Bingham Ray began his film career in 1981 as a manager and programmer at the theater…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1991
The Bleecker Street Cinema closes for good
After a brief and unsuccessful stint showing adult films, the cinema closes for good on a Monday night, ending three decades as a beloved art-house venue in the space once occupied by Mori's restaurant. Its final features include a Jimi Hendrix concert documentary and a Dutch comedy.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2007
Spain's University of Cantabria buys Louis Quintanilla's war murals, once kept in the building
After arriving in New York in 1938, Louis Quintanilla painted five panels called Love Peace Hate War for the Spanish pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair, but the fall of the Spanish Republic kept them from the fair. They appear to have ended up at Free World House, and turned up again when the building was an adult-film theater, with an Exit arrow scrawled on one panel. The artist's son said an early-1990s attempt to retrieve them failed over the price. On February 2, 2007, the University of Cantabria in Santander bought the paintings, which were restored and now hang there.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- Bleecker Street CinemaWikipedia
- The Mori Restaurant Building - 144-146 Bleecker StreetDaytonian in Manhattan
- From posh residences to art movie theater, the many lives of two Bleecker Street housesEphemeral New York
- Escaping the day in the Bleecker Street CinemaEphemeral New York
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