The West End, also known as the "West End Gate", was located on Broadway near 114th Street in the Morningside Heights (New York City) neighborhood of the Borough of Manhattan in New York City. From its establishment in 1911, the bar served as a popular gathering place for Columbia University undergraduates (its slogan was "Where Columbia Had Its First Beer"). The bar was also a meeting place for many Beat Generation writers as well as many 1960s student activists when they attended the university.
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. 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 bought in 1990 by Katie Gardner, a graduate of Columbia's School of Journalism. She and her family installed a back room for beer pong, a basement area for parties, and a side room for dancing, and the bar became popular, especially among university freshmen. It became notorious, however, for allowing underaged drinkers, with or without ID. However, the bar began to crack down on underage drinking since it was shut down by the police in February 2005.
In late 2004, the bar began brewing its own brand of "Ker O'Whack" beer. The bar also served food, including a widely popular Sunday brunch. It installed flatscreen monitors for advertising, and had several televisions showing a regular stream of sports coverage. As a result of these improvements, Playboy Magazine featured The West End as "College Bar of the Month" in its February 2005 issue.
The West End qua West End closed in April 2006 and was replaced in late 2006 by "Havana Central at the West End", part of the "Havana Central" chain of Cuban restaurants.