San Remo Café building

189 Bleecker Street | also 93 MacDougal Street | Greenwich Village | built 1907

Open on the map3 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1925

    The San Remo Café opens as a working-class corner bar that later draws gay artists and writers

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission dates the San Remo Café at 93 MacDougal Street and 189 Bleecker Street to about 1925, when it began as a working-class bar. It grew into a bohemian hangout, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s its patrons included gay artists and writers such as Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, W. H. Auden, John Cage and Frank O'Hara. The commission notes that it closed in 1967.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1950

    The San Remo draws a literary crowd, with Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg and Dylan Thomas among its regulars

    By the 1950s the bar at 189 Bleecker Street was a gathering place for writers including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas and William S. Burroughs. A PBS profile of the poet Delmore Schwartz described its pressed-tin ceiling, tile floors and cheap salads with unlimited bread. It said the younger, apolitical customers, shaped by World War II and the Cold War, were more interested in drugs than the drinkers at the White Horse.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  3. 2013

    July 29

    Village Preservation unveils a plaque on the corner marking the San Remo Café

    The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation put up a plaque at 93 MacDougal Street on July 29, 2013, honoring the cafe's 42 years of operation. David Amram, a musician who had been a regular at the bar, spoke at the unveiling. The plaque marks the corner site in the South Village.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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All 518 buildings with stories in Greenwich Village