Collapse at Chumley's Will Interrupt Literary Pursuits

One of the city's most colorful bars, Chumley's, will likely be closed for months, and could face demolition.

Early yesterday afternoon, contractors were conducting construction work on the interior of the pub at 86 Bedford St. when a chimney collapsed into the bar area. The deputy fire chief for the district, John Bley, said that when emergency workers arrived on scene they saw a 6-by-10-foot hole in what looked to be part of the original brick wall, which dates from the 1830s.

Emergency workers evacuated the occupants of the building above the pub at 86 Bedford and an adjoining building, no. 82, before shutting the street to traffic.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, Kate Lindquist, said a shoring company has been hired to stabilize the collapsed area. Building inspectors and engineers will then assess structural damage. She said demolition of the building is not being considered at this time.

Ms. Lindquist added that the building owner had submitted an application to the Buildings Department to conduct construction work on the interior of the building, but that the department had not yet issued a permit. Consequently, the department is issuing three violations for working without a permit and unsafe construction practices.

Chumley's, a neighborhood institution dating back to 1928, first became famous as a Prohibition-era speakeasy. Purportedly, the expression "86ed" (ejected) was first coined there — a reference to the bar's street address.

During the 1930s and '40s, the bar gained a reputation as a literary hangout. The author Theodore Dreiser frequented Chumley's, and Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were rumored to have done so, too.

In the April/May issue of Bookforum, Hazel Rowley writes that Simone de Beauvoir spent time at Chumley's in 1947. Ms. Rowley found, upon looking through "America Day by Day," that "Beauvoir twice mentions the bar on Bedford Street but calls it Chamby's."

In 1948, Beauvoir wrote: "In Bedford Street is the only place in New York where you can read and work through the day, and talk through the night, without arousing curiosity or criticism: Chamby's." She also commented on the bar's interior design: "The room is square and utterly simple, with its little tables lined against the walls, but it has something so rare in America — atmosphere."

The "atmosphere" that Beauvoir noted approvingly is largely a result of the original owner's literary aesthetic. Lee Chumley, who lived above the restaurant and managed it until his death in 1935, decorated the bar with photographs of writers and the book jackets from their most famous works. A New York Times obituary of Chumley notes: "He made it a point to obtain the jacket of a book on an author's second visit to the restaurant … among the authors whose book jackets adorned the walls [are] Theodore Dreiser, Count Eric von Luckner, and John Cabbage."

The Chumley atmosphere — photographs and book jackets, a working fireplace, and sawdust-covered floors — continues to attract writers and artists. Last Tuesday, Bookforum and Harvard University Press co-hosted a party at Chumley's to celebrate Michael Lerner's "Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City."

Yesterday afternoon, as firemen and emergency workers milled around 86 Bedford, neighbors gawked and worried out loud about the fate of the storied bar. In a prepared statement, the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, said she would "monitor the situation."