Cedar Tavern
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cedar Tavern (or Cedar Street Tavern) is a bar and restaurant in New York City at 82 University Place between 11th and 12th Streets. It is famous as a former hangout of many prominent Abstract Expressionist painters and beat writers. The establishment was located at 24 University Place in its heydey, but moved three blocks north in 1963.
The Cedar Tavern was opened in 1866 on Cedar Street.[1] Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and others of the New York School all patronized the bar in the 1950s when they lived in Greenwich Village. Historians consider it an imporant incubator of the Abstract Expressionist movement. It was also popular with beat writers Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Frank O'Hara, and LeRoi Jones. Pollack was evenually banned from the establishment for kicking in the men's room door, as was Kerouac, who alleged urinated in an ashtray.
In 1960s Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs, David Amram, and occasionally Bob Dylan, were known to patronize the Cedar Tavern. D.A. Pennebaker, Dylan, and Bob Neuwirth met there to plan the shooting of Don't Look Back. [2]
The old site, where most of the significant events in the establishment's history occured, is now a woman's clothing store.
In December of 2006, the Cedar Tavern closed to allow for the construction of a seven-story addition to the building in which it is housed. Its owners have pledged to reopen it eventually, but a opinion piece in the December 3 edition of the New York Times speculated that it may have closed for good.
[edit] Trivia
- The Cedar Tavern continued to be known as the "Cedar Street Tavern" even after its move two miles north of that street.
