EAR INN • SOHO, MANHATTAN
[Ear Inn is part 14 in a series of tidbits from the chapters of my book Bars, Taverns and Dives New Yorkers Love, published by the good folks at Rizzoli Publishing. You can order it online now at Powell’s, Amazon, Rizzoli, and Barnes & Noble.]
The building housing the Ear Inn was built in 1817 by James Brown, aide to George Washington during the Revolution, and a free man of color. The two-story wooden structure stood just five feet from the Hudson River until landfill in the 1800’s pushed the shoreline a block west. True. But. Maybe it was built with charred timber salvaged from the Great Fire of 1776 in the late 1770s. Or, you know, maybe around 1790. Facts are soft, records are missing, and for its first couple centuries, New York didn’t really care too much about yesterday. Then, in the 1960s, the Landmarks Preservation Commission was established, sparing 326 Spring and a lot of other old buildings from being knocked down.
Talk to the owner of the Ear Inn, Martin Sheridan, and he’ll tell you what he knows. He says business records indicate it was Brown’s tobacco warehouse in 1817, the year of the first record of alcohol being sold there. Recent excavations of the foundation brought up pieces of broken Champagne bottles and oyster shells, said to have been tossed by Dutch picnickers, enjoying a break from the crowded hustle of New Amsterdam (population 6,000), a mile to the south.
Sheridan, a patron of the Ear, bought it in 1979, saving it from a committee of owners who “did everything they could to discourage business.” Old dockworkers still drank there in those days, then calling the bar The Green Door. As they left and/or died off, the area began to change and an artier crowd filled in, then a richer crowd, and then more tourists, who started to enjoy the Ear Inn about as much as the regulars did. Business picked up and remains steady, with a blend of neighbors and visitors, near the intersection of the West Village, Tribeca and SoHo neighborhoods.
The Ear Inn remains a link to post-Revolutionary War New York, when the city’s population was smaller than today’s Appleton, Wisconsin, and the waves of the Hudson pounded a few feet from the front door. Go in, order a beer or a bite, and soak it up.
Drink: Most Popular: Guinness. Not to be missed: The St. Summer
Recipe:
The St. Summer
3 oz. Tito’s vodka
2/3 oz. St. Germain elderflower liqueur
Splash of freshly squeezed lime juice
Lemon twist
Stir ingredients in a large glass with ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with the lemon twist.
Next up: Tooker Alley of Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood, another chapter of my book Bars, Taverns and Dives New Yorkers Love, which you can order right here. Limited-edition signed prints of the bars are available here.