The Birthplace of Bohemia;

PFAFF's on Broadway by Arno Basta

Bohemians were originally the wandering, nomadic Gypsies of Central Europe, but in the 1840's the word was used to criticize the poor artists who lived in the side streets of Paris. In 1845, romantic stories of a class of "starving artists" began to circulate in a Parisian magazine. Scorn was turned into fascination when readers began to encounter such free living bohemians as the painter-composer called Schaunard, his friend, artist Marcel and the philosopher, Colline. They thrilled to the love affair between poet Rudolphe and his long suffering, Mimi. Resultant from the success of his Scenes de la Vie de Boheme author Henri Murger earned his way into the very middle class social group his characters detested. He made an important discovery: the bourgeoisie would pay for safe glimpses of bohemian life and get a taste of its personal freedom. Also that the counterculture life Murger led could be undermined by the comforts accorded his success. The pattern first surfaced in America in Greenwich Village, where its impact is still found.

In 1855 Charlie Pfaff opened a basement beer hall at 653 Broadway, a few doors south of the Winter garden, modeled on the German Rathskellers that were booming in Europe. His joint was a dim, smoke filled cave, as it were, and a gathering place for a bunch of like minded rebels, who here became America's first bohemians. It didn't matter to them that Pfaffs was literally underground. Pfaff served the best coffees, the finest beers and cheeses, and the wine cellar was well stocked with fine wines from all over the world.

By 1859, with a lot of help from the Pfaffians, The New York Saturday Press made its debut. The Press was America's first counterculture newspaper with a mix of radical politics personal freedom, naivete, comedy, realism, sexual forthrightness, and enthusiasm. It heralded much of the art and modern literature that surfaced over the years in Greenwich Village, and then the nation.

Pfaff cultivated such creative patrons as the Press staff. He set up long tables in the dark recesses of the cellar, a vault like space that was under the sidewalk of Broadway above. The work of Poe, recently deceased, made him the group's spiritual mentor. But the real shining star of Pfaff's was the very much alive, Walt Whitman.

Walt Whitman was unlike most of Pfaff's patrons in that he had actually published a book. The fact that he paid for the publication of the book himself in 1855 didn't phase the crowd, nor did it diminish the achievement in their eyes. Whitman did not sit at the head of the table, but at a table reserved for him off to the side where he could both observe and participate. he may have been seated there when he dashed off the lines from "The Two vaults", an unfinished poem in 1861:

Charles Pfaff moved his business up to midtown, with the migration north, in 1870. That year the building at 653 Broadway was demolished. A W & J Sloane Store replaced it, and it's marble facade still stands there. In 1979 fire gutted the building that at that time housed The Infinity Disco, among the first dance clubs to cater to hetero and gay people. Pfaff lived until 1890, and his passing was noted with respect. The same fate didn't wait for the publisher of the Press. Henry Clapp ended his days as a pauper in an asylum on Blackwell's , now Roosevelt, Island. Clapp's obits provided the anti bohemian community with ammunition against free living. But Greenwich Village continues to send shivers down the middle American spine, and always will. It all started underground, at Pfaff's.

Copyright 1997 Arno Basta. All rights reserved.