Old Homestead Steakhouse
56 9th Avenue | Chelsea | built 1842
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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.
- 1842
William Scott's Greek Revival rowhouse with a shop below goes up at 56 Ninth Avenue
No. 56 Ninth Avenue was built around 1841-42 for William Scott, who had owned the lot since 1836. It is one of three three-story brick rowhouses with stores below (Nos. 56 to 60), in the Greek Revival style, with a molded wood cornice over the storefront. Long before any steakhouse, the ground floor held a shoe dealer around 1850 and a grocer in 1855.
- 1878
A saloon run by Ferdinand Blasy is the earliest known business at 56 Ninth Avenue
The Old Homestead traces its heritage to 1868, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission allows that a saloon or restaurant may have begun here then. The earliest business it could document at No. 56, though, was the saloon of Ferdinand Blasy, started around 1878. Blasy, a German immigrant, and his wife Mary also lived in an apartment upstairs from about 1879 to 1884. Later saloonkeepers Adolf Schwerkolt and Bernhard Efinger lived there with their families too.
- 1917
Gustav Schauffert buys the building and opens the Old Homestead Restaurant & Cafe
Gustav Schauffert took over the saloon around 1912 and had the ground floor lowered to street level and extended at the rear in 1916. In 1917 he bought the building and opened a restaurant under the name Old Homestead Restaurant & Cafe, incorporating it as Old Homestead Cafe, Inc. the next year. The corporation was dissolved in 1923, shortly before his death, but his widow kept the trade name and leased the restaurant to others.
- 1929
John Heinz runs the Old Homestead and lives above it until 1945
John Heinz was running the restaurant by 1929, and he and his wife made their home on the upper floors, which he eventually owned, until 1945. Heinz then went into business with the meatpacker Herman H. Siemer: in 1946 their company took over the neighboring buildings at 58 and 60 Ninth Avenue, tying the steakhouse to the wholesale meat trade of the Gansevoort Market.
“By 1929, the restaurant had been taken over by John Heinz. Heinz and his wife lived on the top floors of the building…”
- 1955
Harry Lewin and Harry Sherry lease the Old Homestead as it markets itself to the meat district
Heinz stepped back around 1955 and leased the restaurant to a new company, the Original Old Homestead Corp., led by Harry Lewin and Harry Sherry. In the 1950s its advertising stressed its spot at the center of the meat market and its claim to be the oldest such restaurant in the city. In 1959 the writer Kate Simon, in her guidebook New York Places and Pleasures, described it as a place founded for and by the neighborhood's merchants.
- 1964
The Old Homestead takes over No. 58 next door and keeps spreading along Ninth Avenue
Read more
In 1964 the steakhouse took over 58 Ninth Avenue, a building long used by meat dealers, and occupied all of it until 2002. Over the years the restaurant grew into neighboring buildings, eventually filling the ground floors of Nos. 50, 52, 54, 58 and 60. The historic signage on No. 56 includes vertical and horizontal neon signs and a polychrome half-size steer, which was moved there from No. 58 around 2002.
- 1994
Ruth Reichl finds nothing beats the Old Homestead for sheer quantity
In 1994 Ruth Reichl of The New York Times judged that no steakhouse could match the Old Homestead for sheer quantity. She compared the porterhouse for two with the Manhattan phone book, saying it was thicker and weighed twice as much.
“In 1994, Ruth Reichl of The New York Times stated that "for sheer quantity, nothing can beat the Homestead".”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1995
The Old Homestead appears in Seinfeld and later in The Sopranos
The steakhouse has turned up on television more than once. A 1995 episode of Seinfeld included it, and the HBO series The Sopranos used it in 2004. The restaurant is described as the oldest continuously operating steakhouse in the United States, ahead of Keens (founded 1885) and Peter Luger (1887), and its staff are represented by UNITE HERE Local 100.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Old Homestead SteakhouseWikipedia
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