This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2017) |
Location | Broadway, New York City, New York, United States |
---|---|
Type | Bar |
Opened | 1911 |
Closed | 2006 (Structure since repurposed by various other businesses) |
The West End Bar, also known for a time as the "West End Gate", was located on Broadway near 114th Street in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City. From its establishment in 1911, the bar served as a common gathering place for Columbia University students, faculty and administration (its slogan was "Where Columbia Had Its First Beer"). Amongst the Columbia students who used the bar as a meeting place were Beat Generation writers of the 1940s, and later for student activists of the 1960s.
In the early 1940s, in the formative days of the Beat Generation, students including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Lucien Carr spent hours at the bar discussing their studies and their futures. [1] In the 1960s, the bar was host to student activists upset about racial discrimination in the area and US foreign policy regarding Vietnam. Mark Rudd, who led the Columbia branch of Students for a Democratic Society and was a prominent member of the Weather Underground after his expulsion from the university in 1968, spent time at the bar while a student.
After closing for a year and a half, it was leased from Columbia University by a group led by Jeff Spiegel and his wife Katie Gardner, a graduate of Columbia's School of Journalism. They renovated The West End, making an effort to have it look like it might have looked as an old Victorian era bar/restaurant. They expanded one room for catering, parties and even beer pong, a basement room for live jazz, and a large side dining room that could be used late night, after the kitchen was closed, by drinkers and revelers.
Jazz historian Phil Schaap ran a jazz program at the venue from 1973, when he was an undergraduate at Columbia, to the mid-1990s. [2]
In 2004, The West End began brewing its own beers including its very popular, nearly 10% "Ker O'Whack", named for Columbia dropout and author, Jack Kerouac. The West End in 1990 also became a full-service restaurant, including a widely popular Sunday brunch. It installed flat screen monitors for sports events. Playboy magazine featured The West End as "College Bar of the Month" in its February 2005 issue.
The West End qua West End was sold in April 2006 and was replaced in late 2006 by "Havana Central at the West End", part of the expanding "Havana Central" chain of Cuban restaurants. The Havana Central closed on May 28, 2014, when the lease ended. [3] In September 2014, the space reopened as Bernheim & Schwartz Restaurant and Hall, which was described by its owners as a tribute to brewing in Manhattan, and especially to Bernheim & Schwartz, a brewery founded in 1903 and located at 128th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. Bernheim & Schwartz closed in April 2017. [4] In 2021, the space reopened as Hex & Co., a board game café. [5]
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac, himself, as the narrator, Sal Paradise.
Lucien Carr was a key member of the original New York City circle of the Beat Generation in the 1940s and also a convicted manslaughterer. He later worked for many years as an editor for United Press International.
The Five Spot Café was a jazz club located at 5 Cooper Square (1956–1962) in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City, between the East and West Village. In 1962, it moved to 2 St. Marks Place until closing in 1967. Its friendly, non-commercial, and low-key atmosphere with affordable drinks and food and cutting edge bebop and progressive jazz attracted a host of avant-garde artists and writers. It was a venue of historic significance as well, a mecca for musicians, both local and out-of-state, who packed the small venue to listen to many of the most creative composers and performers of the era.
WKCR-FM is a radio station licensed to New York, New York, United States. The station is owned by Columbia University and serves the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1941, the station traces its history back to 1908 with the first operations of the Columbia University Radio Club (CURC). In 1956, it became one of the first college radio stations to adopt FM broadcasting, which had been invented two decades earlier by Professor Edwin Howard Armstrong. The station was preceded by student involvement in W2XMN, an experimental FM station founded by Armstrong, for which the CURC provided programming. Originally an education-focused station, since the Columbia University protests of 1968, WKCR-FM has shifted its focus towards alternative musical programming, with an emphasis on jazz, classical, and hip hop.
The Berghoff restaurant, at 17 West Adams Street, near the center of the Chicago Loop, was opened in 1898 by Herman Joseph Berghoff and has become a Chicago landmark. In 1999, The Berghoff won a James Beard Foundation Award in the "America's Classics" category, which honors legendary family-owned restaurants across the country.
Upland Brewing Company is a brewery in Bloomington, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1998, it is the third largest brewery in the state, with six locations across central Indiana, and makes over 80 beers a year, including ales, lagers, and sour beers.
Philip van Noorden Schaap was an American radio host, who specialized in jazz as a broadcaster, historian, archivist, and producer. He began presenting jazz shows on Columbia University's WKCR in 1970, and hosted Bird Flight and Traditions In Swing on WKCR for 40 years, beginning in 1981. Schaap received six Grammy Awards over the course of his career.
East Campus is a prominent building on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in New York City, located along Morningside Drive between 117th and 118th Streets. One of the tallest buildings in the neighborhood, it serves primarily as a residence hall for Columbia undergraduates, although it also contains the university's Center for Career Education, its Facilities Management office, and the Heyman Center for the Humanities. East Campus, a $28.7 million facility, was designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects and built in 1979-1982.
Marlton House, or Hotel Marlton is located at 5 West 8th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is notable for having housed many famous artistic figures, especially during the peak of the area's bohemian scene.
Since it earliest days, the economy of Louisville, Kentucky, has been underpinned by the shipping and cargo industries. Today, Louisville is home to dozens of companies and organizations across several industrial classifications.
Wallach Hall is the second oldest residence hall on the campus of Columbia University, and currently houses undergraduate students from Columbia College as well as the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Hogan Hall is a dormitory of Columbia University primarily reserved for fourth-year undergraduate students. The dorm is popular for its suite configurations as well as its central location. Built in 1898 as a nursing home, the building was converted to graduate student housing in 1977. It was named after Frank S. Hogan. It was converted into an undergraduate residence in 1994, then renovated in 2000 with the completion of a new entrance connecting it to Broadway Hall, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects. Located at the corner of 114th Street and Broadway in the Manhattan neighborhood of Morningside Heights, the building is named for former New York District Attorney Frank Hogan.
The Mink Building is a five-story German-American style red brick structure at 1361-1369 Amsterdam Avenue between 126th and 128th Streets, in the Manhattanville neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, originally part of a large brewery complex. It is one of a few buildings that remain of a vast beer brewing industry in this area in the late 19th century, beer brewing was an industry as big as finance or real estate in the 21st century New York City. The site of the complex at 1361 Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan - predating residential development in Harlem - was chosen due to its relative isolation at the time.
The Café Bohemia is a jazz club located at 15 Barrow Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Its original run lasted from 1955 to 1960, and has been revived at its original location as of October 2019.
The Dux de Lux, originally called Llanmaes, was a popular beer garden and restaurant in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was part of the Arts Centre.
Top of the Hill (TOPO) is a brewpub, restaurant, event space and distillery located in downtown Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The restaurant and brewery opened in 1994 at the intersection of Franklin and Columbia Streets adjacent to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was one of the first microbreweries in the state. TOPO expanded in 2010, adding the Great Room event space and the Back Bar, which is home to North Carolina's first on-premise cask ale program.
Old Town Pizza is a pizzeria established in 1974 and located in the historic Merchant Hotel building in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood of central Portland, Oregon in the United States. The company has a satellite location at Vanport Square in Northeast Portland that includes a brewery branded as Old Town Brewing Co. Two days before its March 2012 opening, a fire forced the restaurant to undergo reconstruction for six weeks.