Cornelia Street Café | |
---|---|
| |
Cornelia Street Cafe, circa 2009 | |
![]() | |
Restaurant information | |
Established | July 1977 |
Closed | January 1, 2019 |
Owner(s) | Robin Hirsch |
Previous owner(s) | Charles McKenna, Raphaela Pivetta, Robin Hirsch |
Dress code | Casual |
Street address | 29 Cornelia St. |
City | Manhattan |
County | New York City |
State | New York State |
Country | United States of America |
Coordinates | 40°43′53″N74°00′09″W / 40.731348°N 74.002391°W |
Website | corneliastreetcafe |
The Cornelia Street Cafe was a restaurant and bar at 29 Cornelia Street in New York City's Greenwich Village, opened in July 1977. The cafe closed at the end of 2018 because of rising rents from the gentrification of the West Village, ending on its holiday closed day of New Year's Day 2019. [1] [2] The cafe had been voted one of the best places to listen to jazz music in the world. [2]
In the 21st century, the Cornelia Street Cafe was a restaurant and nightclub, showcasing musicians, poets, writers, and artists. In 1998, the cafe was one of the restaurants recognized by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation with a Village Award presented to "Cornelia Street Restaurants". [3]
In December 1977, the then-fledgling cafe hosted the first meeting of the Songwriters Exchange, a weekly gathering in which the Village's songwriters could present their new songs – and only new songs – to their peers. Two years later the cafe sponsored Cornelia Street: The Songwriters Exchange, an LP of eight Village singer-songwriters; released by Stash Records, the LP was named "Album Of The Month" by Stereo Review in December 1979, and was later re-released as a CD. It has the first known recordings of several prominent Village artists, including Cliff Eberhardt, David Massengill, Rod MacDonald, Martha Hogan, Michael Fracasso, Brian Rose, Eliot Simon and Lucy Kaplansky (as Simon & Kaplansky), and was Tom Intondi's second recorded work. [4]
Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village also contains several subsections, including the West Village west of Seventh Avenue and the Meatpacking District in the northwest corner of Greenwich Village.
Hugh Blumenfeld is an American folk musician and singer-songwriter from Connecticut. He was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, graduated with degrees in Biology and Humanities from M.I.T. in 1980, and got a master's degree in English Literature from the University of Chicago in 1981. He was active in the Greenwich Village music scene in the 1980s, attending the Cornelia Street Songwriters Exchange and performing at Folk City and Speak Easy while working on a PhD in Poetics from New York University. He also helped to edit the Fast Folk Musical Magazine and recorded songs for a dozen issues. After earning his PhD in 1991, he worked as an English professor until 1994, when he began writing and performing full-time. Over the next 10 years he toured mainly in the Northeast and Midwest, with several short tours in Europe and one in Israel. In 1999 he was appointed Connecticut State Troubadour.
Ludlow Street runs between Houston and Division streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Vehicular traffic runs south on this one-way street.
The Village Vanguard is a jazz club at Seventh Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. Originally, the club presented folk music and beat poetry, but it became primarily a jazz music venue in 1957. It has hosted many highly renowned jazz musicians since then, and today is the oldest operating jazz club in New York City.
The Jekyll & Hyde Club was a theme restaurant owned by Eerie World Entertainment in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The name and theme derive from Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 Victorian gothic novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Rod MacDonald is an American singer-songwriter, novelist, and educator. He was a "big part of the 1980s folk revival in Greenwich Village clubs", performing at the Speakeasy, The Bottom Line, Folk City, and the "Songwriter's Exchange" at the Cornelia Street Cafe. He co-founded the Greenwich Village Folk Festival, now a non-profit, and is still the President and co-producer of its events. He is perhaps best known for his songs "American Jerusalem", about the "contrast between the rich and the poor in Manhattan", "A Sailor's Prayer", "Coming of the Snow", "Every Living Thing", and "My Neighbors in Delray", a description of the September 11 hijackers' last days in Delray Beach, Florida, where MacDonald has lived since 1995. His songs have been covered by Dave Van Ronk, Shawn Colvin, Four Bitchin' Babes, Jonathan Edwards, Garnet Rogers, Joe Jencks, and others. His 1985 recording "White Buffalo" is dedicated to Lakota Sioux ceremonial chief and healer Frank Fools Crow, whom he visited in 1981 and 1985, and who appears with MacDonald in the cover photograph. Since 1995 MacDonald has lived in south Florida, where his cd, "Later that Night" was named "Best Local Cd of 2014" by The Palm Beach Post and reached the top ten in national roots music charts. His first novel, The Open Mike, about a young man in the open mike scene of Greenwich Village, was published on December 5, 2014, by Archway Publishing. On December 10, 2020, MacDonald released his 13th solo recording, Boulevard, on Blue Flute Music. On April 14, 2021, his second novel, The American Guerillas, was published by Archway Publications. On June 1, 2023, MacDonald's 14th solo album, Rants And Romance, a collection of 14 new songs and 3 by other songwriters, was released by Blue Flute Music, charting in the top ten on national folk music charts during the summer.
John Studebaker "Jack" Hardy was an American singer-songwriter and playwright based in Greenwich Village, who was influential as a writer, performer, and mentor in the North American and European folk music scenes for decades. He was cited as a major influence by Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, and others who emerged from that scene in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Hardy was the author of hundreds of songs, and toured for almost forty years. He was also the founding editor of Fast Folk Musical Magazine, a periodical famous within music circles for twenty years that shipped with a full album in each issue, whose entire catalog is now part of the Smithsonian Folkways collection.
Fast Folk Musical Magazine was a combination magazine and record album published from February 1982 to 1997. The magazine acted as a songwriter/performer cooperative, and was an outlet for singer-songwriters to release their first recordings.
Bridge Cafe was a historic restaurant and bar located at 279 Water Street in the South Street Seaport area of Manhattan, New York City, United States. The site was originally home to "a grocery and wine and porter bottler", opened in 1794, and has been home to a series of drinking and eating establishments. In the nineteenth century, the building was described in city directories variously as a grocery, a porterhouse, or a liquor establishment. Henry Williams operated a brothel there from 1847 to 1860 and the prostitutes were listed in the New York City census of 1855. In 1888, the building's exterior was altered to its present form. The building was damaged during Hurricane Sandy, and the restaurant remains closed as of 2020. Until its closure, it was the city's oldest continuous business establishment, though the name and ownership had changed numerous times. It had most recently been under the same ownership since 1979, when the former McCormick’s, a bar frequented by local fishmongers, was purchased by Jack Weprin and converted into The Bridge Cafe, a white tablecloth establishment.
Gerdes Folk City, sometimes spelled Gerde's Folk City, was a music venue in the West Village, part of Greenwich Village, Manhattan, in New York City. Initially opened by owner Mike Porco as a restaurant called Gerdes, it eventually began to present occasional incidental music. It was first located at 11 West 4th Street, before moving in 1970 to 130 West 3rd Street. The club closed in 1987.
Café Society was a New York City nightclub open from 1938 to 1948 on Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village. It was managed by Barney Josephson.
MacDougal Street is a one-way street in the Greenwich Village and SoHo neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. The street is bounded on the south by Prince Street and on the north by West 8th Street; its numbering begins in the south. Between Waverly Place and West 3rd Street it carries the name Washington Square West and the numbering scheme changes, running north to south, beginning with #29 Washington Square West at Waverly Place and ending at #37 at West 3rd Street. Traffic on the street runs southbound (downtown).
Bank Street is a primarily residential street in the West Village part of Greenwich Village in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It runs for a total length of about 725 metres (2,379 ft) from West Street, crossing Washington Street and Greenwich Street, to Hudson Street and Bleecker Street where it is interrupted by the Bleecker Playground, north of which is Abingdon Square; it then continues to Greenwich Avenue, crossing West 4th Street and Waverly Place. Vehicular traffic runs west-east along this one-way street. As with several other east-west streets in the Far West Village, the three blocks west of Hudson Street are paved with setts.
Caffe Reggio is a New York City coffeehouse first opened in 1927 at 119 Macdougal Street in the heart of Manhattan's Greenwich Village.
Avignone Chemists was an American full service pharmacy located in New York's Greenwich Village. Avignone Chemists was founded in 1832 which made it the oldest apothecary in the United States. Avignone marketed itself as the Independent Anti-Chain Pharmacy. It closed in 2015.
The San Remo Cafe was a bar at 93 MacDougal Street at the corner of Bleecker Street in the New York City neighborhood of Greenwich Village. It was a hangout for Bohemians and writers such as James Agee, W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Miles Davis, Allen Ginsberg, Billy Name, Frank O'Hara, Jack Kerouac, Jackson Pollock, William Styron, Dylan Thomas, Gore Vidal, Judith Malina, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and many others. It opened in 1925 and closed in 1967.
Florent was an all-night diner in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan that opened in 1985 and closed in 2008.
Greenwich House Music School is a community arts school located at 46 Barrow Street in New York City's Greenwich Village.
Caffè Vivaldi was a coffeehouse, restaurant, and jazz, classical and folk music venue at 32 Jones Street, off Bleecker Street in the West Village of New York City. Its proprietor, Ishrat Ansari, opened the establishment in 1983 and it operated for 35 years.
Dante, also known as Dante NYC, is a cafe and craft cocktail bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan. The establishment was founded in 1915 as Caffé Dante, an Italian coffeehouse. It was rated the best bar in the world in 2019, in The World's 50 Best Bars publication.