In 1936, a man named Joe King opened a restaurant serving “moderately priced German dishes and imported beers” in a German Renaissance Revival building on Third Avenue and 17th Street.

This was once the outskirts of New York’s enormous German immigrant enclave, Kleindeutschland. By the 1930s, Little Germany had mostly decamped to Yorkville (Luchow’s remained as well on 14th Street until the 1980s.)

But it would have been worth it to come down to this place in the old neighborhood. The beer steins, the lights, the tin ceiling, the piano installed for communal singalongs. . . . It closed in the 1960s, but I wish it were still around.

[Postcard: digitalcommonwealth.org]

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Tags: defunct New York restaurants, Germans in New York City, Joe King's Rathskeller NYC, Kleindeutschland New York City, Little Germany East Village, old New York German restaurants, restaurants German NYC, Scheffel Hall NYC