Luchow's

Technically, "Luchow's" should have an umlaut over the "u"—but I don't know how to make one here, and I've seen formatting not carry through to its desired effect and end up looking like a misplaced emoticon, so I'm going to skip it. Interestingly, though, the umlaut was removed between 1917 and 1950 due to anti-German sentiment, but finally restored because without the umlaut people mistook it for a Chinese restaurant. Eventually, in the 1980s, when the original location was abandoned and the business attempted to move to the Theatre District, the umlaut was removed once again, one might presume, not to confuse it with a heavy metal band.

Before all this umlaut-nonsense, however, Luchow's (with umlaut) was one of the most famous restaurants in the country, America's foremost German restaurant, and THE place to be on Christmas. Established in 1882 at 110 East 14th Street in New York City by German immigrant August Luchow, the restaurant managed to hang on for nearly a century, serving German and Austrian fare, including the world-famous Sachertorte.

The painting of Luchow's, below, is by Harvey Kidder and is from Ford Times Cookbook Volume 4. Apparently, during the holidays, the nightly lighting of the Christmas tree was a big deal.



In the book, Dining in New York, by Rian James (2nd Edition, 1931), Mr. James laments what prohibition era 14th Street has become: "...a mere shadow of its former self; a staid, commonplace thoroughfare now, over-run with schlock stores, cut-rate druggists, and shops where the values are so outstanding that the police and the first-comers to a sale arrive simultaneously—a broad, drab, sleepy street..." Sir, if you only knew.

The 14th Street location was closed in the early 1980s, and despite a few lame attempts to revive it or something similar, the building was finally demolished in 1995 and replaced with an NYU dorm.



I wonder, now, if patrons of the Dunkin' Donuts at the spot where Luchow's once thrived ever find themselves placing an umlaut over the "u" in "Dunkin'" without realizing why they're doing it? Even after a building is gone, I wonder, do ghosts of past inhabitants carry on? I like to think someone born in this century might sit at an orange plastic table with a cup of the world's best coffee and notice an odd companion, perhaps from over a 100 years ago, or even one of the more famous guests of Luchow's over the years, too numerous to name here, but among them: Cole Porter, James Cagney, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein, Lillian Gish, Jack Benny, Helen Hayes, Irving Berlin, Rachmaninoff, O. Henry, Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, Vincent Price, Ed Koch, Richard M. Nixon, David Bowie. They all enjoyed the Wiener Schnitzel at Luchow's. Presumably not all on the same night.