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Address | 144 Bleecker Street, New York City, New York |
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Coordinates | 40°43′41.2″N 73°59′57.6″W / 40.728111°N 73.999333°W |
Owner | Placido Mori |
Type | restaurant, art house movie theatre |
Construction | |
Built | 1832 |
Opened | 1883 |
Renovated | 1883 |
Closed | 1937 |
Architect | Raymond Hood |
Mori (1883 – 1937) was a Greenwich Village eating establishment that featured Italian cooking. It became bankrupt during the aftermath of the Great Depression. Its building later housed the Bleecker Street Cinema.
The building at 144-146 Bleecker Street in New York City's Greenwich Village was originally built in 1832 as two rowhouses. [1] Placido Mori [2] converted 144 into the restaurant Mori in 1883 [1] or 1884.[ citation needed] As architecture historian Christopher Gray wrote,
At some point, Mori befriended a novice architect, Raymond Hood, gave him a house tab and an apartment upstairs and in 1920 had him design a new facade for the building to include 146 Bleecker. Hood gave the buildings a row of Doric columns across the first floor, imitation Federal lintels over the windows and a setback penthouse studio. [1]
The restaurant began as a small bar and eatery and expanded to fully occupy a "rambling, old-fashioned" five-story [3] building near Sixth Avenue (Manhattan). [2] It survived the Prohibition era and the worst years of the Great Depression, when it was temporarily padlocked.
Mori closed in 1937, [1] and Placido Mori filed a petition for bankruptcy in early January 1938, stating that the corporation had no assets and liabilities totaling $70,000. [2] The building formerly occupied by Mori was sold by Caroline Bussing through A.Q. Orza, broker, in October 1943. [3]
Mori's gravesite in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is marked with a sculpted memorial designed by Hood and sculptor Charles Keck.[ citation needed]