Great Bars of New York City

In a city of over eight million people, New York City’s bars, pubs, dives, speakeasies, and cocktail lounges provide respite from the relentless pace of daily life, offering an intoxicating blend of camaraderie and ambiance. They’ve even helped to influence major world events over the years, from Fraunces Tavern being turned into George Washington’s official headquarters during the Revolutionary War, to the uprising at Stonewall Inn which ignited the queer liberation movement, to the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis Hotel, which features a mural by the early 20th century painter Maxfield Parrish.

Over the past three centuries, the city’s fabled watering holes have become the stuff of myth, legend, and lore, immortalized in film, literature, theater, television, and song. In more recent years, they have taken on new life as Gen Z-ers have remade neighborhood institutions like Fanelli Cafe into the ultimate downtown hangout. Now, at a time when people yearn for personal connection in an increasingly virtual world, these independent, street-level businesses remain vital centers of community.

To pay tribute to their importance, photographers James and Karla Murray—the award-winning team behind Store Front NYC—introduce Great Bars of New York City, the inaugural volume in a series devoted to quintessential New York culture and its small businesses. For the book, the Murrays teamed up with journalist Dan Q. Dao to spotlight a dazzling array of neighborhood institutions that have become cultural and historical landmarks, like the White Horse Tavern, McSorley’s Old Ale House, and Pete’s Tavern, all of which are still in operation today. They’ve also included lesser-known establishments and beloved dive bars, like Rudy’s Bar & Grill, Milano’s, Jimmy’s Corner, and Sophie’s, as well as unique spots such as the kitschy, hair salon-themed Beauty Bar, and trendsetting speakeasy PDT.

Taking inspiration from the photographer Robert Polidori, cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, the Murrays adopt a cinematic approach. With Great Bars of New York City, they bring 20 years of experience as architectural and interior photographers together for the first time in book form to tell stories of people rooted in place, inviting readers to pull up a stool and raise their glass in celebration.

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James and Karla Murray are husband-and-wife architectural and interior photographers and multi-media artists based in New York City. For over twenty-five years they have focused their lens on the streetscape through portraits of storefronts and shop owners and have strived to capture moments of city life that often go undocumented but capture the spirit, energy and cultural diversity of individual neighborhoods. They made it their mission to thoroughly document unique ‘mom-and-pop’ stores when they began to notice the alarming rate at which the shops were disappearing.

Their critically acclaimed books include STORE FRONT NYC: Photographs of the City’s Independent Shops, Past and Present, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, New York Nights, Store Front II- A History Preserved and Broken Windows-Graffiti NYC. The authors’ landmark 2008 book, Store Front, was cited in Bookforum‘s Dec/Jan 2015 issue as one of the “Exemplary Art Books From The Past Two Decades” and heralded as “One of the periods most successful New York books.” New York Nights was the winner of the prestigious New York Society Library’s 2012 New York City Book Award.