Mori (restaurant)

Mori (1883 or 1884 - 1937 or 1938) was a Greenwich Village eating establishment that featured Italian cooking. It became bankrupt during the aftermath of the Great Depression. Its building later housed the Bleecker Street Cinema.

History

The building at 144-146 Bleecker Street in New York City's Greenwich Village was originally built in 1832 as two rowhouses.^[1] Placido Mori^[2] converted 144 into the restaurant Mori in 1883^[1] or 1884. As architecture historian Christopher Gray wrote,

At some point, Mori befriended a novice architect, Raymond Hood, gave him a house tab and an apartment upstairs and in 1920 had him design a new facade for the building to include 146 Bleecker. Hood gave the buildings a row of Doric columns across the first floor, imitation Federal lintels over the windows and a setback penthouse studio.^[1]

The restaurant began as a small bar and eatery and expanded to fully occupy a "rambling, old-fashioned" five-story^[3] building near Sixth Avenue (Manhattan).^[2] It survived the Prohibition era and the worst years of the Great Depression, when it was temporarily padlocked.

Mori closed in 1937,^[1] and Placido Mori filed a petition for bankruptcy in early January 1938, stating that the corporation had no assets and liabilities totaling $70,000.^[2] The building formerly occupied by Mori was sold by Caroline Bussing through A.Q. Orza, broker, in October 1943.^[3]

Mori's gravesite in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is marked with a sculpted memorial designed by Hood and sculptor Charles Keck.

References

1. Gray, Christopher (November 4, 1990). "Streetscapes: The Bleecker Street Cinema; The 'Lost' Frescoes of an Artist-Soldier". The New York Times. Retrieved April 7, 2013.
2. "Mori's in Village Is Forced To Close". The New York Times. January 5, 1938. p. 23.
3. Harlem Building Gets New Owner, New York Times, October 12, 1943, pg. 40.