Uncle Charlie's Downtown

56 Greenwich Avenue | also 54 Greenwich Avenue | West Village | built 1861

Open on the map3 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. 1861

    George P. Rogers builds No. 56 in 1861 with two matching neighbors

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    No. 56 Greenwich Avenue was built in 1861 for George P. Rogers, who also had the houses at Nos. 54 and 58 put up. It rises four stories. When the city's district report was written in 1969, the ground floor had been altered for a restaurant, and the three buildings shared one cornice with an undulating profile.

    “They were all built in 1861 for George P. Rogers.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1980

    Uncle Charlie's opens as a gay video bar and runs until 1997

    Uncle Charlie's opened in 1980 at 56 Greenwich Avenue and ranked among New York's most popular gay video bars, with a modern interior and banks of television screens that appealed to gay men of the MTV generation. Its bright look was a stark contrast to older gay bars of the Village, which many patrons saw as dark and outdated. It closed in September 1997.

    Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

  3. 1990

    April 28

    A pipe bomb injures three men at Uncle Charlie's; 1,500 march in protest

    At 12:10 a.m. on April 28, 1990, a homemade pipe bomb made from M-80 firecrackers stuffed into a length of pipe exploded at Uncle Charlie's, injuring three men who were treated at nearby St. Vincent's Hospital. Mayor David Dinkins called it an anti-gay attack, and Queer Nation led almost 1,500 protesters from the bar to the Sixth Precinct station house. In 1995 authorities determined that El Sayyid Nosair, a radical group leader, had allegedly planted the bomb.

    Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

Further reading

Nearby

All 1,156 buildings with stories in West Village