White Horse Tavern

302 West 11th Street | also 567 Hudson Street | West Village | built 1910

Open on the map6 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1817

    The tavern's frame building begins as bookseller Daniel D. Smith's house

    Long before it served drinks to dockworkers, the three-story wood-frame structure at the corner of Hudson and West 11th Streets belonged to Daniel D. Smith, a bookseller and stationer who also served as a city assessor and election inspector. The 1969 landmark designation report traces the building's history back to Smith's ownership that year, more than six decades before it became the White Horse Tavern.

    Source: media.villagepreservation.org

  2. 1880

    A bar for longshoremen opens

    The White Horse opened in 1880, when the West Village waterfront was lined with working piers.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1953

    November

    Dylan Thomas's last nights

    The Welsh poet drank here during his final days in New York. He collapsed at the Chelsea Hotel and died on November 9, 1953.

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 1953

    Poet Ruthven Todd brings Dylan Thomas to the White Horse

    Dylan Thomas was in New York in 1953 to narrate Under Milk Wood when the Scottish poet Ruthven Todd took him to the White Horse, a blue-collar bar near the Hudson River piers. Thomas, who called the place 'the Horse', made it his drinking spot of choice. Its long bar, made from a single piece of mahogany, sat beneath a pressed-tin ceiling.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1953

    After Dylan Thomas's death, young writers make the White Horse's back room a talking shop

    Ephemeral New York, quoting Dan Wakefield's memoir New York in the 1950s, says Thomas's death enhanced the tavern's reputation and young writers made it their own. Wakefield, then a 23-year-old freelancer, recalls Michael Harrington hosting an informal seminar on culture and politics in the wood-paneled back room, where left-wing liberals and young conservatives found common ground. Norman Mailer, Seymour Krim and James Baldwin drank there, while local toughs hostile to bohemians, in the McCarthy years, sometimes raided the bar with fists and chairs.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  6. 2004

    Owner Eddie Brennan says the White Horse's staff shield famous drinkers from fuss

    Celebrity watchers followed the famous drinkers, and the White Horse turned into a tourist stop. In 2004 owner Eddie Brennan told The Villager that his staff looks after famous customers without making a fuss and does not let anyone bother them. Daytonian in Manhattan adds that old photographs of the tavern look nearly identical to the building today, with its clapboard Hudson Street front and brick 11th Street side.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village