The Gaslight Cafe — Where Dylan Honed His Craft, Greenwich Village

The Gaslight Cafe at 116 MacDougal Street was the most important venue in the early 1960s Greenwich Village folk revival — a basement club where Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Dave Van Ronk, and others performed during the years that changed American music. Dylan played the Gaslight so regularly in 1961 and 1962 that it was effectively his home stage, and the bootleg recordings made there — released decades later as Live at the Gaslight 1962 — capture him at the moment of his transformation from folk interpreter to original artist. He debuted several original songs at the Gaslight before recording them.

The Gaslight was run by Sam Hood and occupied the basement of 116 MacDougal — a space so low-ceilinged and intimate that performers were essentially inside the audience. The no-alcohol policy (it operated as a coffee house to avoid liquor licensing) gave it a different atmosphere from the bars that served the same scene, and the concentration on the music was absolute. Dave Van Ronk, the 'Mayor of MacDougal Street,' was the unofficial dean of the scene and the figure who introduced Dylan to its networks.

The Gaslight closed in 1971. The address at 116 MacDougal Street has had various subsequent tenants. The Coen Brothers' film Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) is set in the Greenwich Village folk world of this era and was partly filmed in the neighbourhood, capturing something of its character. The MacDougal Street block between West 3rd and Bleecker Streets remains the heart of the surviving Village bohemian geography.