In the second volume of his Letters to Family, H.P. Lovecraft reveals more about the location of his favourite cafe haunt “John’s” in Brooklyn in the mid 1920s. Readers of Tentaclii will recall I took a look for this location in my April 2021 post “Lunch in New York: Spaghetti in Breuckelen”. After that post I had a blog comment from ‘SJM’ pointing out a John’s in the Brooklyn tax-photos at…
185 Willoughby Street, corner Navy Street
… but I left the comment unapproved as I was fairly sure it was not the John’s. 185 Willoughby was a cafe and small corner-store relatively far up Willoughby Street and not especially close to Fulton. There are two photos of 185, one obviously showing changes after a few years.
The latter is from 1940s.nyc and feels like it’s perhaps a few years on after remodelling and gentrification associated with the new high-rise that has gone up in the background.
But a problem arises in this apparent identification… because on page 937 of Letters to Family Lovecraft states…
All three now set out for dinner — at the old Bristol Dining Room in Willoughby Street near Fulton, next door to the now defunct John’s, which was my Brooklyn headquarters for spaghetti in the old days. (July 1931)
Next door.
“Bristol” was the long-established Bristol’s Dining Room, with Mr. J. E. Bristol proprietor. He had a small chain of eight such in New York City by 1920. Can it be found? Well, there is this postcard picture, which appears in a book dedicated to such from the 1905-07 period in Brooklyn…
Here is the old Bristol’s Dining Room seen in all its oyster-purveying glory. As one can see, there is no architectural or street-furniture comparison to be found between the suggested site at 185 Willoughby and the postcard of Bristol’s Dining Room. If, as Lovecraft states, his old John’s was next to the Bristol’s Dining Room then it would either have been in the next-door barbers’ shop (barbering pole, outside) seen up steps on the right of the postcard, or is off to the immediate left and out of range of the camera.
Nor is there, on the 185 Willoughby or its adjacent 1940s.nyc pictures, any glimpse of a possible Bristol’s Dining Room next door. The clincher is that in summer 1931 Lovecraft talks of the “defunct John’s”. Therefore it would not be seen on a late 1930s / early 1940s tax picture. Most likely another nearby cafe took the name in the 1930s, perhaps hoping to profit a little on the name-recognition.
What then was the exact address of the Bristol’s Dining Room in Brooklyn in the mid 1920s? Could it have moved since 1900? Was there more than one in Brooklyn by that time? Those are possibilities. But regrettably the address cannot be discovered on the Web in public records or books, though those with access to pay-walled genealogy records might find it. Nor is there any 1920s branch advertising-map or suchlike to be found.
Can the architecture seen on the card be found on a virtual trot down Willoughby Street? Not on 1940s.nyc, so far as I can see.
So, it’s still a mystery.