Yesterday I at last firmly located the elusive “John’s”, the favourite Brooklyn spaghetti hang-out of H.P. Lovecraft and his circle.

Here again is the ad, from a 1925 radical magazine. “John’s” at “7 Willoughby”.

Who was John Pucciati (1885-1967), who ran John Pucciatti’s Spaghetti House (popularly known as “John’s”)? He was a quite a character in 1910s and 20s New York, and is still remembered to this day. Difficult to research via Google, though. Because for some reason Google Search dumbly insists on removing the quote marks from “John Pucciatti” after the first page of results. But thankfully there’s eTools, which has no such dumbness built in.

The basic details are:

“Established in 1908 by John Pucciatti, an immigrant from Umbria, its menu offered an appetizer, main dish, dessert, and cup of coffee for under a dollar.”

He was an early Italian anarchist. Lovecraft knew a few of these…

There’s nothing about ‘anarchists’ to be afraid of! … they are very harmless folk. … Despite their bold talk they are timid & ineffectual creatures, most of whom would not hurt a fly if they could. I know many of them … [such as Morton, and likely also Loveman in a rather closeted way.] [They are to be distinguished from the Greenwich Village ‘radicals’ who adopt] a slovenly insincerity & cheap posing habit, which merely uses the guise of radicalism as an easy way of attracting attention.” — H.P. Lovecraft, July 1929.

Pucciatti was perhaps of a different order than Morton or the posers at New York parties. Maybe more syndicalist, depending on how much experience he had of the dramatic and very sudden industrialisation of Italy, before leaving for America. Though we can’t be sure, since he doesn’t appear to have left any writings. On him Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City can only offer that his restaurant was one of…

… a multitude of Italian cafes and restaurants offered cheap meals and distraction, serving as important social and political centers. Founded in 1908 by John Pucciatti, an immigrant from Umbria, John’s on East 12th Street was legendarily known as “the favorite meeting place of free thinkers of all nationalities”. Other popular anarchist hangouts included Albasi’s grocery on East 106th Street and the Vesuvio restaurant on 3rd Avenue near 116th Street in East Harlem, where for one dollar radicals could enjoy a cheap meal while debating politics and socializing.

Another book, Making Italian America, has the same and adds a little more from a recent biography of the socialist labour-organiser and editor Tresca…

In the United States, the sovversivi’s most popular hangout was John’s Spaghetti House on East Twelfth Street in New York City (now simply John’s), which was commonly advertised in Italian radical newspapers as ‘the favorite meeting place of free thinkers of all nationalities’. Established in 1908 by John Pucciatti, an immigrant from Umbria, its menu offered an appetizer, main dish, dessert, and cup of coffee for under a dollar. Carlo Tresca, Arturo Giovannitti, and other famous sovversivi regularly ate there, often holding special radical banquets at John’s private apartment upstairs.

At the time he started his main branch, aka ‘John’s of 12th Street’, the Wild West was still wild and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were rooming just around the block. Pucciatti had at least one local artist fresco the walls, paid in free meals. The place was classy, a formal white-tablecloth Italian restaurant with apron-ed waiters. But by the early 1920s the place seems to have slipped over from idealistic tub-thumping 1910s Italian anarchism to illegal tub-brewed booze… and thus the first wave of U.S. gangster-ism. The slide being quite evident from 1922. John’s became a popular watering hole for proto-mafia gangsters such as Lucky Luciano. Who was not so ‘lucky’ one night as he left the place, being gunned down outside. At this time it…

also operated as a well-known speakeasy [i.e. illegal booze purveyor] during prohibition. The ground floor continued as a restaurant, while wine and whiskey were made in the basement and served in espresso cups on the second floor.

Entrance to the upstairs was via a hidden staircase. Head hooch-brewer Mama John had a candle lit in the window when the fresh booze was ready to be served. Any sign of the cops in the area, and the candle went out. One article states that John’s on 12th Street was “ground zero” for the subsequent growth of the Italian Mafia in the U.S. This may explain his low-profile as a business during prohibition, keeping out of directories and not advertising except in journals likely to bring the right type of clientele.

After the war the main John’s catered to off-Broadway actors and the theatre crowd, and continued to be considered one of the top Italian eateries in America. As shown by a tourist Guide Book…

John’s at the corner of 2nd Ave , and 12th St. (the heart of the off-B’way theatre area) has been satisfying the palates of folks for 50 years. Under the guidance of Dan and Ann Pucciatti, the north Italian hostelry…

The 2009 book Restaurant Startup & Growth magazine tells us that his son…

Danny Pucciatti, took over day-to-day management of the [main] restaurant in the 1950s when his parents retired. Eventually he sold the establishment to current owners Mike Alpert and Nick Sitnycky in 1973.

It’s still there today, and still a leading place to eat good food.

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But what of Brooklyn? Nothing seems to have passed into New York restaurateur lore about the 1925-30(?) Brooklyn branch, which is presumably why it has eluded Lovecraftians until now. The opening of this branch can however be dated by the 24-month block of adverts which John took out in Worker’s Monthly. In March and April 1925 his first adverts appeared, but the Brooklyn branch was not advertised. “Indian” here is perhaps a typesetter’s mistake, later corrected to “Italian”?

Then in May 1925 the Brooklyn branch appears on the ad, and the ads (inc. Brooklyn) continue on through February 1927 when they cease. I assume the 24-month block-booking was over. So the Brooklyn branch opened in spring 1925, and it was still in existence in early 1927. John’s first appears in Lovecraft’s 1925 Diary on 4th May, so that both fits and confirms. Possibly there was a grand 1st May ‘May Day’ opening day, something that would be most suitable for an anarchist. Lovecraft returned to John’s to eat on the 6th and 7th May, and frequently thereafter. In the letters a typical encounter with “John’s — the Italian joint around the corner in Willoughby St.” is…

stopping only at twilight, when I wended my homeward way, pausing at John’s Spaghetti place for my usual Sunday dinner of meat balls and spaghetti, vanilla ice cream, and coffee. Incidentally — not many doors away, on the other side of Willoughby St, I found a restaurant which specialises in home-baked beans.

This fits the facts, as the “home-made baked beans” shop was further up and on the other side as can be seen on 1940s.nyc. But John’s remained Lovecraft’s spaghetti “headquarters”, as he later phrased it. He was getting the best that 1920s New York could offer, made by cooks born in little hill-villages in the old country. Which must have been quite some spaghetti. He would afterwards find it difficult to get a comparable ‘New York flavoured’ spaghetti meal in Providence.

Back in New York, John’s had closed before summer 1931. On page 937 of Letters to Family Lovecraft states it was “defunct” by July 1931…

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.

Was John ever on the premises? Unless any Lovecraft letters can show otherwise, back in the mid 1920s it may well have been that John Pucciatti — the anarchist who looked like a Roman nobleman but who was actually from the “little medieval village of Bevagna, between Spoleto and Assisi” — wasn’t sitting down at a table to chat philosophy and art with Lovecraft. He appears to have lived and worked at his main branch. Still, he might have popped in now and again, when he wanted to escape from the big-name gangsters and the fumes of Mama John’s back-yard hooch-brewing.

Here are pictures for “John’s”, located at Willoughby Street, Brooklyn, from May 1925. A regular and favourite New York City haunt of H.P. Lovecraft, from that date.

Here we see Willoughby at numbers 5 – 15 on part of a Library of Congress architect’s photograph made in 1932. It shows the Edison Company’s 1924 offices, with the shadows lifted by myself to reveal a shadow-hidden truck and also some of the detail on the adjacent stores. A corner of a closer building’s roof partly obscures the view.

No. 7 is on the right. Still offering “Lunch”.

No. 5 can be identified by its architecture as seen on other pictures, and is half-seen on the far left of the picture. Circa 1924 it held the office of Lovecraft’s New York writer friend La Touch Hancock. Then we simply count along the row. Numbers 11-13-15 were obviously subsumed by Edison into a single “No. 15”, a building which is still there today and has the same number. Some modern sources erroneously date the Edison Company offices here to “1960”, but that is the date of a building record-photo, not of the building’s 1923/24 erection.

This show us what the street looked like in Lovecraft’s time, with the Edison building there already by 1924-26. Here is the detail, and it suggests John’s was no longer John’s by 1932. I seem to recall that Lovecraft mentions somewhere in a letter that it had closed by the 1930s, but I can’t find that mention. By 1932 it certainly has a ‘cabin’ frontage added, and is the “Busy Lunch” with what might be a “Trommers” or “Drummers” Bar incorporated.

It feels like John had departed, and indeed he had. On page 937 of Letters to Family Lovecraft states of July 1931…

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.

By the late 1930s it was a Wines and Liquor store, as partly seen on the right of a badly mis-placed 1940s.nyc picture. A Lovecraft-like man crosses the street to the art-deco “Automat” which had by then replaced 3-5 Willoughby Street.

A further picture I have shows that No. 7 was still there in 1954, along with No. 1, and 3-5. The Automat at 3-5 was then being gutted and — appropriately enough — the former John’s appears to have become a “Pen Clinic” for ink pens. Lovecraft, always in pursuit of the perfect ink pen-flow, would surely have approved of what appears to have been the final fate of John’s.

1954, what looks like the final years for numbers 1 to 9.

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With these pictures in hand I’d say that the modern layout places the site of No. 7 about at the very edge of the plaza, or maybe a little further out into the highway…

The plaza is small, cramped and over-cluttered… and thus the safest hassle-free place (the city is currently subject to a massive wave of street-crime) for any Lovecraftian tour-guide gathering and talk would appear to be in the far corner of Columbus Park. Which is seen here, after my having ‘virtually’ crossed the highway from No. 15 and its small plaza. I’ve here indicated the continuing line of the ‘lost’ Willoughby Street in a soft orange…

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What did it look like in circa 1925-27? We can’t know, until more pictures are found. But we do have the Subway Construction pictures of 1916, presumably made on lovely large glass-plates so as to forestall any spurious compensation claims in litigious New York City. Good prints of these can now be had from the city’s Transit Museum. They show a place very different from the makeover it had by the late 1930s, so I guess ‘the unknown 20s’ are some way between the two sets of pictures.

But we should be thankful we have three very good pictures of No. 7 as a Hungarian restaurant in 1916, with various vacant units around about. The place would have made a natural transition to an Italian eatery, with newer signs in a slightly more 1920s style and probably a spruce-up in Italian type colours, probably red and green and white rather than what might have been a Hungarian blue and white.

Here we half-see No. 7, but head on, while picturing No. 9. Also seen is a part of No. 11, which by Lovecraft’s time had been lost to the Edison Company’s 1924 offices.

The full circa 1900 run from the original 3 – 15, including the Bristol Dining Room which Lovecraft patronised in the 1930s after John’s closed, can be seen here…

And finally, this wonderfully clear 1916 view of the entrance, looking down the foot of Willoughby toward the Citizen building (hardly to be seen) and the Elevated railway as it curved around and into Fulton. I’ll colourise this at some point, but automation doesn’t even remotely do it and I don’t have the time to do it justice at present.

It was still the same Hungarian place in 1918, when a further small picture shows the subway air ducts being dug.

Some of the (to our eyes) superb signs and sign-writing had no doubt gone by the mid 1920s, perhaps some of the lower vacant units would have become fruit-sellers and the like, and the whole corner would have had a distinctly more seedy and gangster-ish feel about it. Especially after John’s opened. On which, more in the next post.

Following on from yesterday’s Bickford’s, Brooklyn post, another try at finding the very elusive John’s, one of Lovecraft’s favourite eating and supping places in Brooklyn. Which I’ve searched for before…

the letters vaguely talk of the corner of Fulton and Willoughby Street, and the western end of Willoughby St and even “in Willoughby St”.

First, I found some new data about restaurants low on Willoughby, from court records…

FRITZ’S: “on or about the 24th day of March, 1902, the defendant conducted and now conducts a restaurant at No. 7 Willoughby street, Borough of Brooklyn”. In 1901… “7 Willoughby Street, known as Fritz’s restaurant”.

AUTOMAT: In 1936, “Horn and Harart Company … in the restaurant business … located at 3-5 Willoughby Street in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City” … “the defendant The Horn & Hardart Company owned, operated and controlled a certain restaurant commonly known as the Automat, located at No. 3 Willoughby Street in the Borough of Brooklyn”.

The Brooklyn Historical Society then gave me the location of this Automat, in an early-1940s picture and I usefully spotted that this aligned with an adjacent picture of The Brooklyn Gazette building. This gave me a very useful orientation point…

With thanks to the Brooklyn Historical Society. These are not on the 1940s.nyc site and are later on in the 1940s. Prints can be had.

Just to check, in the following picture we look at the same place but from the left-hand side. From the Fulton Street facing side of the Citizen building in 1916, we look across the end of the street and see an anchor sign peeping out from across the road. This can be tallied with a picture of “No. 1 Willoughby”, on which the very same sign is seen. These are New York Board of Transportation pictures, made before the subway construction in 1916. No. 1 would be the “Cafeteria” by the late 1930s, and then the slightly renamed “Cafe-Bar” by the early-mid 1940s.

These are also now in the public domain and held by the New York Transit Museum, if you want nice prints made. Again, they are not on 1940s.nyc.

With those two composite views of the same site established, I needed a wider view from the period. Because a great deal has changed by today, and the approximate 1940s.nyc tax-photos map is quite misleading as well — as well as being not very useful on pictures at this particular location. Today Willoughby Street starts with a cursory new plaza containing only No. 15, this being the former Brooklyn Edison Co., built as electricity company offices in 1923/24 (site of the vaudeville/cinema Royal Theater at 11-16 Willoughby, corner of Pearl). Today the rest of the bottom of Willoughby Street, along with the Citizen newspaper building, has been wiped out by the huge multi-lane highway and the plazas either side.

Here’s the more useful orienting bird’s-eye 1910 postcard, and also a 1940s/50s map showing street layouts along with what are probably the subway lines. I think the Elevated railway down Fulton had been dismantled, by then?

With the location established, I now move along and up the street on the same side, again using the excellent and free 1916 New York Board of Transportation pictures. Here you can see a tiny bit of No. 1 (note the anchor sign), and 3 and 5, in 1916. Note that the number 5 can be seen.

From January 1916 No. 5 was the new Headquarters of the Brooklyn Press Club. Doubtless the proximity to the Citizen newspaper helped there, and also nearby was the best private Directory and Guide-book library in the city. I have also discovered that upper floors of No. 5 later held the office of none other than Lovecraft’s New York friend La Touche Hancock, professional versifier and fellow British Empire loyalist. Here we see him advertising at this address in Student Writer, with such ads running from 1922-24 and also in at least one movie magazine…

By 1931 No. 5 was the “American Book Exchange”. Photographic evidence shows the “Automat” was not there in 1932, but a little later 3-5 was be completely re-made as the wholly new art-deco “Automat”. Thus the “Automat” only appeared after Lovecraft left New York City…

Here in the early 1940s we also see a little glimpse of No. 7, just peeping in at the right-hand edge of this early 1940s picture. It had survived Lovecraft, and appears to be looking much the same as the mid 1920s.

Hmmm. Hang on a minute. “Bristol’s” at No. 3? Sounds familiar. On page 937 of Letters to Family Lovecraft states of July 1931…

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.

Yup, same place. From Lovecraft’s own words, Bristol’s was “next door to the now defunct John’s”. So… John’s must be either 1, 5, or 7. Yes, I’ve found it was at 7…

Found at last. This ad for John’s is from 1925, at the required “7 Willoughby”. His branch opened in Brooklyn early May 1925, and the owner was the spaghetti-maestro John Pucciati. Who, as it turns out, was also a leading Italian anarchist in New York City, and by that time deep into running one of New York’s key illegal speakeasy joints. More on John tomorrow, and more of the relevant building pictures.

This picture is No. 7 in 1916, nine years before John took it over in May 1925. As we can see in this picture it was a bit pokey, it terms of getting a table with a view…

This lack of views raises a problem. How did Lovecraft sit in John’s and look out at the Brooklyn Citizen building? Which it’s likely he did. Because that was where and how he spotted his cheap suit from Monroe Clothes, across the street from John’s in an upper window. A 1922 copy of The New York Times (thanks Archive.org) brings this Monroe location a little closer than it was in my previous fruitless search for John’s. The NYT has the Monroe Clothes chain’s main Brooklyn branch at 413 Fulton Street, aka the Citizen newspaper building…

So, it appears that I was led astray by their earlier 1917 “Fulton and Hoyt” address for Munroe, which I looked for some years ago now. It now looks like they moved further up Fulton Street toward Borough Hall at sometime between 1918 and 1922. The company then failed in December 1925 – June 1926 after being “dragged into bankruptcy” by a vexatious creditor. When the official receiver was appointed for the Monroe Clothes bankruptcy in June 15th 1926, it was usefully listed at “409-21 Fulton Street”. This then is further confirmation that they were indeed at 413 Fulton Street by 1922. 413 was likely their main ground-floor entrance, and then they had sales and stock rooms above that stretched across No. 409-21. They were a purely “upstairs” men’s suits store, which is how they offered their famous cheap prices.

But how could Lovecraft have seen the Citizen building when eating at John’s at No. 7? I can only assume that No. 7 had some kind of extended rental across the upper roof-space, in order to have more tables and also more ‘tables with a view’. Which would look something like this…

So, the Citizen building would have been in view, if this was the arrangement. As I’ll explain tomorrow, John had some tight ‘mob’ connections by this time, and thus could have ‘swung’ such an extension across the upper floors, even had the other owners been reluctant. More on John tomorrow, along with fine photos of No. 7.