The Gaslight Cafe
| Location | 116 MacDougal Street New York City, New York United States |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 40°43′47.01″N 74°0′1.93″W / 40.7297250°N 74.0005361°WCoordinates: 40°43′47.01″N 74°0′1.93″W / 40.7297250°N 74.0005361°W |
| Owner | John Mitchell John Moyant Sam Hood Ed Simon |
| Type | Coffeehouse |
| Genre(s) | Folk music, et al. |
| Opened | 1958 |
| Closed | 1971 |
The Gaslight Cafe was a coffeehouse in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York. Also known as The Village Gaslight, it opened in 1958 and became notable as a venue for folk music and other musical acts. It closed in 1971.
The Gaslight was originally a "basket house" where unpaid performers would pass around a basket at the end of each set and hope to be paid. Opened in 1958 by John Mitchell, the Gaslight showcased beat poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso but later became a folk-music club. John Moyant bought the club in 1961, and his father in law Clarence Hood and his son Sam managed the club through the late 1960s. Ed Simon, the owner of The Four Winds, reopened the Gaslight in 1968. The club was run by Betty Smyth, mother of Scandal lead singer Patty Smyth, and blues guitarist/performer Susan Martin until it closed in 1971.
Folk musician and actor Gil Robbins worked as the club's manager in the late 1960s.
The club was next door and down the stairs from the street-level bar, the Kettle of Fish, where many performers hung out between sets. Some nights the Kettle of Fish was "locked" down to the public because a young "reclusive" singer and poet was in attendance...Bob Dylan. Also next door was the Folklore Center, a bookstore/record store owned by Izzy Young and notable for being a musicians' gathering place and center of the New York folk-music scene. Live at The Gaslight 1962 (2005), a single CD release including ten songs from early Dylan performances at the club, was released by Columbia Records.
In the Folk Music Encyclopedia, Kristin Baggelaar and Donald Milton wrote "The Gaslight was weird then because there were air shafts up to the apartments and the windows of the Gaslight would open into the air shafts, so when people would applaud, the neighbors would get disturbed and call the police. So then the audience couldn't applaud; they had to snap their fingers instead."
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