23rd Street Bar and Grill - Klube's Restaurant - St.Blaize Hotel - 158 E 23rd Street

I thought they tore it down. When I knew it, it was dba the "23rd Street Bar and Grill", a yuppie's hangout in the early 1980's in amongst the various Baruch college buildings in the neighborhood. An assortment of old, new, and in between in terms of architecture. 

I loved the woods in the bar, and pictures and tile floor which looked original and dating from the 1890s. 

Looking things up I discovered that it did not disappear under an apartment building as of the 2017 Google photo above. Memory going. Duh.

In various articles the building goes back to 1840s. It had a stint as a Raines Law Hotel whereby you could open your bar on Sunday after the 1896 "reform" law designed to shut down Democratic politics and liquor on Sundays, with a loophole that you could sell liquor in a hotel on Sundays. So saloons suddenly became hotels with "rooms for rent" upstairs in order to stay open on Sundays. Which meant that you needed 10 rooms for rent, as in a hotel, which meant that this building as a bar on the ground floor had partitions in rooms upstairs to make 10 rooms and of course hookers found these cheap unwanted living spaces dba "hotels" a great place to haunt off the streets. This one law IMO destroyed the character of the Bowery overnight turning it into a red light district because of all the bars already in existence, now hotels, in that neighborhood. 

As a Raines Law Hotel selling liquor on Sundays, Freight Car super-salesman Diamond Jim Brady used to bring his out of town buyers to a NYC convention, show them a good time on the town and land up here in the "St. Blaze Hotel" for drinks and sex on his business expense account. The story sounds legit since this was in the neighborhood of the old Madison Street Garden, a favorite haunt of his famous parties on the roof top garden etc. 

Then in 1911, it became Klube's Restaurant, a place for German style food. It had close to 30 years as that and later an assortment of tenants as steak houses and bar and grills like the 23rd Street Bar and Grill. Supposedly some scenes were shot late one night for the movie "Cotton Club" which may or may have made it in the movie for a few seconds, the bar room shots that is in the movie. 

When I frequented the place, the bartender was an actor waiting for his next big part in cinema. But years later I see that he dropped out of "Hollywood" and never made another movie, except for some bit part in Firestarter with Drew Barrymore. 

Glad to see that the building has survived. Have some fond memories of the place.