New York City is a boîte boneyard, a nite-spot necropolis, a potter’s field of cabarets, oyster palaces and hotel lounges.
Some names of past hotspots live on in popular lore — your Stork Club, your El Morocco. But there were so many others, maybe smaller in size and fame, that were at one time just as legendary with a certain clientele. Today they are nearly unknown. The heyday of these storied joints can never be recreated. Well, if we can’t step inside, let’s loiter outside and toast, in salute to good times past. We may be a little late, but we have time for a quick one.
Today's Stop: Ye Syne of Ye Krazy Kat
For
years Volare has been among our favorite Village restaurants. Food and
service are top notch, and the building, at 147 West 4th Street, is
overflowing with history. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney began her Studio Club, which would eventually evolve into the Whitney Museum of American
Art, in the main and lower floors, John Reed worked on Ten Days That
Shook the World here and Edward Hopper had his first solo exhibition at
the Club. It housed a later version of the Bohemian hangout Polly
Holliday’s restaurant until sometime in the early 1930s when the space
became Mother Bertolotti’s.
As enjoyable as the osso bucco and the vitello tonnato, as impeccable as the waiters’ jackets, as lovable as the archetypal Greenwich Village Italian restaurant interior, the incomparable thing about Volare is the art on the walls. Above the booths hang large charcoal and crayon drawings of scantily clad showgirls cavorting with elegantly attired sports. We asked our host about them and he said they were created by a successful Broadway set designer called Cleon Throckmorton. That’s a name that’s hard to forget. Installed during the Bertolotti era (some are dated 1933), they remained with the restaurant when it became Volare in 1984.
In 1924, fresh out of college in Washington, DC, Throckmorton went
to work designing sets for the Provincetown Players, starting with
Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, and dressed many of their productions
for several years. Moving to Greenwich Village after that first season
was the natural next step. An early commission was his design for the
interior of the Cherry Lane Theatre, also in 1924. He soon went on to conquer
Broadway.
From the moment he hit the Great White Way, he was apparently kept hopping. His October 25,1965 obituary in the New York Times tells us, “In the nineteen-twenties Mr. Throckmorton became so busy and so prominent that his name, it was said, appeared on Broadway playbills with a frequency exceeded chiefly by the fire commissioner.”
Cleon Throckmorton, at right, with pals in front of the Krazy Kat Klub. Courtesy Shorpy.com |
That’s a little about Mr. Throckmorton. Unsurprisingly, we became fans the moment we clapped eyes on those walls at Volare. From that day we were on the lookout for Throckabilia, so you can imagine our eyes were like saucers when our daily dose of the Shorpy photo blog began to deliver posts featuring the man himself! These photographs date to 1921, Throckmorton’s college days in DC, and show Cleon and friends, decked in Bohemian splendor, at play in and around a speakeasy/nightclub of their own creation called the Krazy Kat Klub (or sometimes Klubb.) Descriptions of the interior mention a riot of gaudy Impressionist and Futurist pictures on the walls, and a clientele of students, artists and atheists. It was one of the very few speakeasies we’ve ever heard of to boast a treehouse out back.
The club was of course named in honor of George Herriman’s masterpiece, the comic strip Krazy Kat. Although the strip lasted from 1913 to 1944, the twenties would have been the height of its popularity, and it is impossible to overstate the impact of Herriman’s creation at that time with highbrow types. Not many daily comics inspired essays from art critics, and even a ballet (1922). The innovative art and surreal story lines had to have had an irresistible appeal for the youthful Throck and his arty pals.
All this vicarious hotcha was well and good, but the spirit of Grade “A” Fancy demanded that one day we would have to track down what remained of this den of frivolity. Recently, finding we had business in the District, we did just that.
The Krazy Kat Klub was housed in a stable down an alley called Green
Court, off Thomas Circle. The building is long gone, probably
Charleston’d to flinders. The blue building, now a gym, is where it once stood.
But you can get an idea of what it may have looked like from the converted stables across the alley, which currently hosts a gay bar of long standing.
On our return home there was no question but to visit Volare to raise a glass to Cleon Throckmorton, surrounded by his fabulous drawings.
A toast! To Throck and his showgirls, to George Herriman and Krazy Kat, and to all the iconoclasts and flappers, the members of the Klub.
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