Signature book kept at Ye Olde Tavern. 1905-1917. Illustrated and signed guest register for a New York City drinking establishment. [118] manuscript and scrapbook leaves. Folio, original paneled gilt calf, worn, backstrip detached; minor wear to contents.
Ye Olde Tavern was a conspicuously old-fashioned early 20th-century English-style pub at 161 Duane Street in lower Manhattan, on the ground floor of an old-fashioned whalebone workshop, run by partners Vidal & Thompson. This house autograph book is filled erratically, skipping pages and moving forward and backward in time, as might be expected in a volume compiled collectively by large numbers of intoxicated people over a period of years. It is filled with elaborate drawings, crude doodles, aphorisms, bits of drinking doggerel, signatures, clippings, menus, and pages devoted to fraternities, social clubs and private parties such as the annual dinner of the "Gravesend Bay Knockabout Assn." We find a surprising number of women among the entries.
We have not checked all of the many hundreds of names. Among the minor celebrities noted are pianist Max Liebling and his son, musical critic and composer Leonard Liebling, in 1911. Author Elbert Hubbard in 1914, a year before his death on the Lusitania, wrote a cheeky review: "This is the place that has capitalized on its cockroaches, banked on its bacteria, and makes money out of its must. Like the place, and its grub." One portrait purports to be of John D. Rockefeller, "with his consent"; we would wager it actually depicts a random barhound with a passing resemblance to Rockefeller. We could say much more about this charming volume, but it has inspired us to instead knock off for the evening and enjoy a cold beverage.New York, 1905-1917
