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Ghost Signs of NYC: Village Gate
Art D’Lugoff opened the Village Gate in 1958 on the ground floor and basement of the former Mills House №1, a hotel for men down on their luck. The basement had been the hotel’s laundry room. By the time the Gate closed in 1994, it had become a Greenwich Village icon.
The Gate opened as a jazz and folk club and featured stars that included John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Pete Seeger, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, Odetta and Thelonius Monk. Soon the club expanded to include rock’s Jimi Hendrix, Velvet Underground and Patti Smith. Aretha Franklin made her New York concert debut at the Gate.
In the 1970s musical comedy revues like National Lampoon’s Lemmings, with John Belushi and Chevy Chase, were presented upstairs at the Top of the Gate.
“A New Yorker in style and attitude, D’Lugoff had a kind of beatnik appearance, slender and bearded,” noted the New York Daily News when D’Lugoff died in 2009. “He had a droll sense of humor, loved show business stories and was never shy about offering an opinion.
“D’Lugoff was one of those colorful, outspoken New York showmen and raconteurs who could have stepped right out of Guys and Dolls — only he also had a…
