Today, March 26th, is the anniversary of Whitman’s death. While it has been 122 years since he passed as this article highlights, he is still very much alive today!
With big thanks to Stephanie Blalock for sharing, presented below is an NYU article on the brilliant and wonderful Karen Karbiener doing what she does best–searching for Walt Whitman! Karen and her students visit the location of the former Pfaff’s beer cellar in New York city, Whitman’s bohemian, pre-Civil War hangout.
Under the Traffic, Where Whitman Drank and Dreamed
I love Karen’s suggestion that a place “has memory—that it continues to cultivate a certain feeling… it takes on an aura of maybe what it once was.”
You can read lots more about Pfaff’s beer cellar and the many people who frequented it here on this wonderful website:
The Vault at Pfaff’s
And one last gem, unfortunately this establishment is no longer open, but around 2011 the former Pfaff’s space was remodeled and restored to what it may have been like in Whitman’s day. Take a look at the menus, you could even order a drink called “Leaves of Grass.”
Too bad it closed, it looks like it was a wonderful restoration! I would like to have visited.
Inside The Vault At Pfaff’s, The 19th Century Beer Cellar Turned Cocktail Lounge