A few months ago I got caught up in the mystery of the diner that inspired the iconic Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks. Did it exist? If so, where exactly was it? Was the building demolished or was it still standing?
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (1942)
There were some long-held assertions and assumptions out there about the location that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. The only real evidence to go on was that Hopper said in an interview that the diner was on Greenwich Avenue in New York City. He also claimed that he took liberties by simplifying the scene and by painting the diner as larger than it was in real life…which means that it wouldn’t even look the same if someone were to find it! But Greenwich Avenue is only about 9 short blocks long, so you’d think it would be easy to find the little joint that inspired the painting, right?
Wrong.
At the time, I linked to Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York because he’d taken the lead in doing some additional legwork and research after some back-and-forth between he, myself and another blogger named Teri Tynes. Jeremiah posted a week-long series that managed to capture the obsessive/addictive aspects of the Nighthawks hunt. While beautifully written and informative, it ultimately failed to reach a conclusion about the location of the diner. The problem was not so much that there weren’t enough possibilities…there were too many. Between old photos of now-demolished buildings and the buildings that are still standing today, you could picture that diner in about a dozen different spots.
Oh well, that was fun. Time to let that one go, I thought. But then another possible location popped up when I wasn’t even looking for it.
Just a couple weeks ago, my wife and I were watching a great old film called Blast of Silence. It’s a stark, black & white, noir sort of thing about a hit man in New York City. It was filmed in 1959, almost 20 years after Hopper painted Nighthawks. In one scene, the hit man is trailing someone around the streets of Greenwich Village after leaving the Village Gate nightclub on Bleecker. Suddenly, the camera pans past a tiny corner diner that looks a helluva lot like Nighthawks. Check out these screenshots from the film:
screenshots from Blast of Silence (actors Larry Tucker and Allen Baron)
Big windows that allow a through-the-corner view? Check. Round stools with no backs? Check. Rounded counter? Check. No tables or booths? Check. Staff dressed in white with little pointy hats? Check. Men in fedoras looking pensive? Check.
No redhead in a red dress, though.
Keep in mind that Blast of Silence was a low-budget film and that these are not extras in the background and the diner is not a set. This is how this particular corner on this particular New York City street looked on that night in 1959 when they shot the scene.
Because I have some kind of history-geek disorder, evidently, that compels me to pursue these kinds of things, I decided I would find out where that corner diner was and whether it could have been the Nighthawks diner. I followed some clues in the film (reflections in the windows, numbers on storefronts, and business names) and discovered that, lo and behold, this the Southeast corner of W. 8th Street & 6th Avenue…right where Greenwich Avenue begins just on the opposite side of the intersection.
But so what? The painting was made 20 years earlier. What are the chances that it looked the same in 1941? The answer to that question came from New York Public Library’s online photo collection. I found a 1939 photo of that corner that shows it to be a Nedick’s, which was/is evidently a hot dog chain.
1939 shot of Nedick’s at SE corner of 6th Ave & W. 8th St., NYC
This is what was there in Hopper’s day and the building was only a few years old when this shot was taken. (The previous building had been demolished for the burial of the 6th Avenue subway sometime in the mid-30s). The annoying difference between the 1939 Nedick’s storefront and the 1959 diner in the film is the lack of that distinctive 45-degree angle entrance from the corner. Hopper’s painting shows no entrance there (in fact it shows no entrance at all), so Nedick’s could work. That alteration to the building must have been made sometime after Nedick’s but before the film. Either that or the building on that site was demolished yet again after standing for less than 20 years…which is entirely possible in New York City.
Incidentally, this little diner/hot dog stand is now part of the Barnes & Noble store that currently stands on that corner. A second story was added sometime in the 70s or 80s (someone out there probably knows) and several different storefronts were combined to become what is now Barnes & Noble. (One of those storefronts, as seen in the film, is Marboro Books, a chain which was bought by Barnes & Noble at some point in their history).
Current SE Corner of 6th Ave & W. 8th St. as seen in Google Maps street view
Ultimately this is all just another “what if” to join the other what ifs in the Nighthawks mystery, but if I ever walk into that B&N again it'll be fun (and weird) to picture those old men in fedoras sitting at the rounded counter in the little restaurant that I now know was once there.
UPDATE (1/9/11): A reader has pointed out in his comment below that photographs (at www.robertotter.com) show a Nedick's on that corner as late as 1962/1964...meaning that the "diner" in the film is indeed Nedick's. This leads me to believe that what we see in the film (screenshots above) is most likely what Edward Hopper saw when he walked past that corner (as he must have many, many times...as his studio was only a few blocks away) twenty years earlier. In my own mind, I'm satisfied that this is very likely the place that inspired the Nighthawks painting.
Though that could very well be wrong (!) and there's almost no way to prove it at this point.
(I can't provide a direct link to the specific Robert Otter photos of Nedick's because the website is very right-protected. There's one on the first "gallery" page of the site. Another is on the 9th page)
Update II (5/24/13): A methodical and detailed search by Bob Egan is here. Very well done and much more reasoned than my own post above.