Lion's Head and Mattachine building

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

Open on the map4 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. 1853

    Carpenter Gilbert J. Bogart is assessed for the Italianate house at 59 Christopher Street in 1853

    No. 59 is one of three Italianate houses built in 1853 on the north side of Christopher Street, assessed to the carpenter Gilbert J. Bogart. Like its neighbor No. 57, it has a three-story brick front with a bracketed roof cornice whose paneled fascia shows an acanthus motif between rosettes. The steep stoop was later removed and a basement entrance put in its place. In 1922 a small prow-shaped store was added beside it at the corner of Seventh Avenue South.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1966

    Wes Joice opens the Lion's Head, a bar for Village writers, at 59 Christopher Street

    In 1966 Wes Joice, a former minor league ballplayer, policeman and bartender at P.J. Clarke's, opened the Lion's Head at 59 Christopher Street. Newspaper reporters and editors spread the word, and the bar became a hangout for writers: Norman Mailer is said to have planned his 1969 run for mayor there, and Jessica Lange waited tables. Joice lost the place to bankruptcy in 1994, and rising rents closed it in 1996.

    “The Lion's Head (also called The Head), which he first opened in 1966 at 59 Christopher Street. ... The Lion's Head closed two years later, in 1996, due to rising rents.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 1972

    July

    The Mattachine Society of New York moves into the second floor of 59 Christopher Street

    The Mattachine Society Inc. of New York relocated its office to the second floor of 59 Christopher Street in July 1972, three buildings from the Stonewall Inn, after earlier offices on Broadway and West End Avenue. A $10,500 bequest from the seaman Albert Fahner paid for the move. The older gay rights group was being overtaken by younger, more radical groups, and this was its last office; it dissolved in 1976. Other gay organizations also met there.

    Source: NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project

  4. 1999

    The Kettle of Fish bar moves into the former Lion's Head space at 59 Christopher Street

    The Kettle of Fish, a bar that opened on MacDougal Street in 1950, moved in 1999 to 59 Christopher Street, the space the Lion's Head had occupied until 1996. The bar had already moved once before, in 1987, to the former site of Gerde's Folk City.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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