White Horse Tavern

The White Horse Tavern at 567 Hudson Street is one of New York's oldest bars, operating since 1880, and one of its most literary. Dylan Thomas drank himself to death here, or nearby: on the night of November 3, 1953, he staggered back to the Chelsea Hotel from the White Horse after reportedly consuming eighteen straight whiskies, fell into a coma, and died in hospital four days later. He was 39. The bar became a memorial to him and, by extension, to the idea of the self-destructive artist living hard in the Village. Bob Dylan adopted his stage name partly in homage to the Welsh poet.

For musicians, the White Horse was part of the same West Village geography that included Cafe Wha?, the Gaslight, and the other venues of the early 1960s folk revival. It served as an informal gathering place for the folk community, a place where musicians and writers mixed in the easy way that made Greenwich Village of that era feel like a continuous conversation. Jim Morrison was also a regular in the late 1960s when The Doors were based partly in New York, drawn by the bar's reputation as a place where serious people drank.

The White Horse Tavern is still open and still looks much as it has for decades -- a proper bar, not a tourist attraction, with Dylan Thomas photographs on the walls and the kind of dark wood and dim lighting that suits serious drinking. It is one of New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission designated landmarks. The bar on Hudson Street serves its function as both a neighbourhood pub and a place of secular pilgrimage, with the two uses coexisting in the imperfect way that suits it.