55 Bar

55 Christopher Street | also 113 7th Avenue South | West Village | built 1915

Open on the map7 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. 1917

    M. Alletta Crump opens a tearoom called the Crumperie in the basement

    Mary Alletta Crump, who went by M. Alletta, had come from the South to train as a nurse but was advised to take up a lighter profession. Inspired by her surname and a family recipe, she started the Crumperie in the basement beneath No. 55, serving tea and buttered crumpets from late morning to early evening. She moved among the tables with a ukulele, singing folk songs, French and Russian ballads and spirituals, and a 1922 newspaper column listed the room among the favorite haunts of Village artists and actors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1919

    Hyman Satenstein founds the bar that runs as a speakeasy through Prohibition

    Hyman Satenstein started the basement bar that later became the 55 Bar in 1919. One account says he came home from the First World War and won the property in a card game. Alcohol was banned soon after he opened, and he kept serving illegally as a speakeasy until repeal, when he obtained a liquor license. In the 1960s Bradley Cunningham acquired the bar and later opened the jazz club Bradley's.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1960

    The Country Dance and Song Society makes its headquarters in the building

    From the early 1960s the Country Dance and Song Society kept its headquarters at No. 55 Christopher Street. It was headed by May Gadd, then regarded as the leading American expert on English country dancing and on square dancing, its American cousin, and she had advised choreographer Agnes de Mille on the 1943 musical Oklahoma! Country dance classes met in the space every Tuesday evening, at least through 1977.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1983

    Live jazz begins at the 55 Bar when a bassist asks the owner for a gig

    Peter Williams bought the bar in 1981, and jazz began there in 1983 with performances at first open to the public and unpaid. It began when the bassist Jeff Michael Andrews approached Williams about playing a set. Andrews brought in guitarist Mike Stern, who then played the room every other week until it closed, and Stern's wife, Leni Stern, later began a residency of her own. The bar joined the Greenwich Village Jazz Festival every year from 1986 to 1989.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 2007

    February 22

    Owner Queva Lutz, who made the bar a workshop for new music, dies

    Queva Jayne Lutz, who owned the 55 Bar, died on February 22, 2007. Born in Harlingen, Texas, she left home at 16 for California, where she ran a bookstore, and moved to New York in 1977. At the bar she built a relaxed, close-quarters room where musicians could stretch out and try new material. Her son, Scott Ellard, was among the survivors, and a memorial service was held at St. Peter's Lutheran Church on March 15.

    Source: downbeat.com

  6. 2014

    Spring

    David Bowie scouts Donny McCaslin's quartet from a table near the stage

    On a Sunday evening in spring 2014, David Bowie dropped into the 55 Bar after his friend, bandleader Maria Schneider, suggested he hear that evening's headliner, saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his quartet. He sat at a table close to the stage, listened to a set of exploratory jazz and left without speaking to the musicians. About ten days afterward an email reached McCaslin asking him and drummer Mark Guiliana to join Bowie in the studio, a collaboration that grew into Bowie's final album, Blackstar.

    Source: rollingstone.com

  7. 2022

    May 23

    The 55 Bar closes after a final night packed with more than a hundred people

    Pandemic closures cost the 55 Bar its revenue, and a GoFundMe campaign launched in September 2021 with a $100,000 goal raised close to $61,000. On its last night, a Monday, more than a hundred musicians and regulars crowded into the basement room, and singer Paul Jost's quartet played the final set. Owner Scott Ellard, who had taken the bar over from his mother in the early 2000s, said the loss of business had been very big for such a small place.

    Source: gothamist.com

Further reading

Nearby

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village