Caffé Dante

79 MacDougal Street | Greenwich Village | built 1910

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.

1915
Caffé Dante opens at 79-81 MacDougal Street in the South Village's Italian quarter
Caffé Dante was established in 1915 at 79-81 MacDougal Street, in a South Village then shaped by Italian immigration. The Landmarks Preservation Commission ranks it, with Caffé Reggio at 119 MacDougal, among the oldest South Village businesses still operating when the district was designated in 2013. A footnote adds that in 1940 the place seems to have been called the Dante Alighieri Café.
Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission
1971
Mario Flotta buys Caffé Dante in 1971, decades after the cafe opened
Mario Flotta bought Caffé Dante in 1971, well after its 1915 opening, and its earliest owners are not known today. When new owners took over in 2015, they hung photographs of the cafe in earlier years, including one of Flotta.
Source: Wikipedia
2015
Two Australians buy Caffé Dante and reopen it as a craft cocktail bar
In 2015 Linden Pride and his wife Nathalie Hudson, both from Sydney and settled in the West Village since 2013, bought the old Caffé Dante. They installed a pressed-tin ceiling close to the original pattern and repainted the dark green walls cream, but kept the Caffé Dante sign hanging over MacDougal Street. In 2019 the bar was rated the best in the world by The World's 50 Best Bars.
“Linden Pride along with his wife Nathalie Hudson ... purchased the old Caffé Dante in 2015 ... It was rated the best bar in the world in 2019…”
Source: Wikipedia

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