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Takes It’s a familiar story. A well-known, popular local shop or restaurant is abruptly shuttered and supplanted with another establishment. On Friday, January 9, 2004, it happened to the venerable Turtle Bay Cafe, 225 East 44th Street. It suddenly closed its doors, losing its lease, according to the NY Daily News, to a new eatery. The Turtle Bay Cafe replaced a long-established bar and restaurant, Costello’s, a hangout for writers, reporters, photographers and artists from the then nearby Daily News, UP, AP, and the New Yorker. One day, back in May, 1976, some twenty-odd of New York’s best known cartoonists were assembled by NY Daily News’s Bill Gallo in Costello’s. There, well-stoked with free food and drinks, they covered an entire wall with drawings of their favorite characters – a unique and colorful mural with likenesses of Spiderman, Fred Flintstone, Dagwood Bumstead, Beetle Bailey, that beloved NY Mets rooter, Basement Bertha - and many others. Costello’s closed in 1992 but the Turtle Bay Cafe preserved the mural, even though its clientele changed from the press to actors and UN diplomats. When the Turtle Bay Cafe closed, the mural was in grave peril. It was not known whether its successor would opt to cover it up or, far worse, destroy it. Now the owner of 225 East 45th Street has announced that this unique mural, filled with drawings of many of New York’s best-known cartoonists, will be spared. Articles appearing in Our Town and the New York Daily News, as well as a Turtle Bay Bulletin to its members, described how this work came into being and the danger to which it had been exposed when the Turtle Bay Cafe announced its closing in early January. The mural, we are assured, will be incorporated into the dÈcor of the new restaurant that expects to open there in the near future. A remarkable memento of a different, not so long ago era of Turtle Bay history, has been rescued.
The Turtle Bay Association is a nonprofit (501c3) community organization.
224 East 47th Street, New York City 10017 |
