Cedar Tavern

Cedar Tavern was the unofficial clubhouse of the New York School — a booze-soaked think tank where Abstract Expressionism got argued over and argued through. The bar’s third location at 24 University Place drew the full roster: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline, alongside Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Most nights devolved into a rotating mix of art criticism, ego clashes, and impressive quantities of alcohol.

The proximity was the initial pull — Cedar was the closest bar to Robert Motherwell’s weekly salons in his nearby Greenwich Village apartment. The other draw was practical: University Place in the 1950s was genuinely seedy, which meant cheap drinks and none of the tourists or business crowd that would have ruined the atmosphere. The regulars were loyal enough that Pollock still somehow got banned for kicking in the bathroom door, and Kerouac for urinating in the sink.

The Cedar Tavern ran as the Ab Ex crowd’s home base through the 1950s. When the building sold in 1963, it reopened a few doors down, but the scene had moved on — the movement itself was fading — and it never recaptured what it had been. The original Cedar Tavern had opened in 1866 on Cedar Street, a full century before its most famous era.

Location: 24 University Place, New York, NY 10003