The End of McGurk's Suicide Hall (1895–2005)

[Eve]

Damn. According to the wonderful site Forgotten New York, the legendary dive McGurk’s Suicide Hall on the Bowery has been demolished. I had no idea it was still there, or I’d have shown up (with a bottle of veronal) long ago . . .

“The Mama Leone’s of dives,” as Santé puts it, displayed one of the first neon advertising signs in NYC, but that was its only concession to modernity. It was opened in this building by Irish immigrant John McGurk in 1895: his previous drinking establishment had been the Mug, further down the Bowery, where the waiters carried knockout drops. Just in case. McGurk took similar precautions at his new place. According to Luc Santé, the waiters were armed with chloral hydrate. Prostitutes looking for johns frequented McGurk’s and engaged in a practice that gave McGurk’s its nickname: a suicide craze. There were six in 1899 alone, with the implement of choice being containers of carbolic acid. Most of the women who killed themselves were teenagers between 16 and 18. Waiters came to recognize persons who might attempt suicide and formed flying wedges to eject the aggrieved parties before the deed could be attempted or completed. Nevertheless, the notoriety got McGurk a good chunk of his business. He was forced out in 1902 and would up in California.

The Hall, and the building next to it, the low-rise Hadley Hall, or Volksgarden, a gathering place for German immigrants when they dominated the Lower East Side in the latter 19th Century, then the Stanton Trading restuarant supply company, soldiered on for over a century after. Writer/sculptor Kate Millett had an apartment in the building for 38 years, and fought eviction, with other tenants, by the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Area, which proposed to build new buildings containing 700 apartments, of which they promise 175 will be low-income units. The tenants lost, and finally accepted a relocation deal.

[Daithi_Lacha]

Holy crow! Suicide by carbolic acid? What a hideous and sad way to end your life…

[DMark]

The Forgotten New York site is fantastic! Thanks for the link…I will be spending hours looking through it.

McGurk’s Suicide Hall is a place I wish I had known about when I lived there. I used to love to go into dives whenever I would find one, just to check out the interior design. Some of them had some pretty grand fixtures and woodwork and furnishings, despite years of neglect and grime.

By the way, isn’t the mirror behind the bar at Marie’s Crisis behind plastic due to it being a part of the national preservation registry or something? I recall hearing them tell me that when I was there and of course, I believe everything people tell me in bars. Still…that was one very special looking mirror…