Jack’s

“Let’s go to Jack’s.”

Jack’s (Manhattan Oyster and Chop House)
1891–May 4, 1925*
Chop House

Alternate Names:

Manhattan Oyster Bar (1891)

Ownership:

Timothy Hurley (1899–?; Joined partnership with a one-sixth interest)

Joseph P. Kennelly (1891–1899; One-third interest in partnership and managed Columbus Avenue restaurant)

John “Jack” Dunston (1891–1925)

Location:

303-306 Columbus Avenue (c. 1891–1900)

6th Avenue and 43rd Street (1891–1925) [Numbered 759-763 6th Avenue at the time]

Publications:

Popik, Barry. “Flying Wedge (Formation of Jack’s Restaurant Waiters).” The Big Apple. Blog, October 1, 2019

Churton, Tobias. Aleister Crowley in America: Art, Espionage, and Sex Magick in the New World. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2017.

“Jack in the Apple: The Long Colorful Career of Jack Spooner.” SpoonerCentral.com. Blog, 2011.

Grimes, William. Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York. New York: North Point Press, 2009: 141-143.

Morris, Lloyd. Incredible New York: High Life and Low Life from 1850 to 1950. New York: Random House, 1951: 260, 272.

Runyon, Damon. “The Brighter Side.” New York Post, May 31, 1937. [Republished in “Author-Journalist Damon Runyon & Jack Spooner Reminisce in 1946.” SpoonerCentral.com. Blog, 2011.]

Hill, Edwin C. “Ghosts of a Gayer Broadway.” The North American Review 229,5 (May 1930): 544, 551-552.

“Jack’s, Petitioner, v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Respondent.” In Mabel M. Owen, Reports of the United States Board of Tax Appeals, November 9, 1929, to February 21, 1930, Volume 18. Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1930: 454-461.

Winkler, John K. “Some Bounce Easy.” New Yorker, February 2-9, 1929: 38.

O’Malley, Frank Ward. “Hic Jacet Jack’s.” Saturday Evening Post, November 17, 1928: 34, 153-154.

“Death of Jack Dunston Calls Up Ghosts of Gay 90s When Men Really Liked Good Food.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 1, 1928: 61.

“Friends Mourn John Dunston at Cathedral Rites.” New York Herald Tribune, December 30, 1927: 15.

“John Dunston, Host, Founder of Jack’s Dies.” New York Herald Tribune, December 27, 1927: 1.

“Jack’s Is Back, but Gone Is Dawn Greeters’ Joy.” New York Herald Tribune, March 22, 1926: 11.

“Farewell to Jack’s.” New York Herald Tribune, May 6, 1925: 14.

“Jack’s Famous Cafe Closes Its Doors.” New York Times, May 5, 1925.

“Jack’s, Where They Used to Greet the Dawn, Soon to be Auctioned.” New York Tribune, July 15, 1922: 1.

McIntyre, O.O. “New York Day by Day.” Buffalo Enquirer, January 25, 1922: 4.

“Mainly About People: ‘Jack’s’ House in the Limelight.'” New York Sunday News, January 8, 1922: 10.

“Raid ‘Jack’s’ Get $100,000 in Liquors.” New York Tribune, January 7, 1922: 1.

“Matinee crowds swarmed by thousands into Forty-third Street yesterday to watch the most spectacular liquor raid conducted since prohibition come into effect. The raid…was on Jack’s Restaurant, 761 Sixth Avenue, opposite the Hippodrome, where $100,000 worth of the choicest liquors were seized and taken away in two warehouse trucks little smaller than freight cars.”

“The Little Row in Jack’s.” Brooklyn Citizen, March 7, 1914: 6.

Where and How to Dine in New York. New York: Lewis, Scribner & Co., 1903: 69-72.

Notable Guests:

Diamond Jim Brady (Businessman)

Aleister Crowley (Occultist)

Benjamin Decasseres (Journalist)

O. Henry (Short Story Writer)

William Travers Jerome (Former Manhattan District Attorney)

Bat Masterson (Journalist)

Evelyn Nesbit (Model)

Frank Ward O’Malley (Journalist)

Theodore Roosevelt (26th President of the United States)

Damon Runyon (Journalist)

John L. Sullivan (Professional Boxer)

Booth Tarkington (Writer)

Augustus Thomas (Playwright)

Notes:

In the 1880s, Dunston opened a saloon in the future location of Jack’s called the Battling Nelson Grill – this name was later given to the first of the restaurant’s four main rooms. (1)

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Additions made to the restaurant in 1900 and 1905 included the Blue Room, which hosted the wedding breakfast of Jay Gould’s son and became a popular college haunt, and the White Room for “the more reserved element.” (2) A fourth room, the Rosemary for Remembrance Room, was later added, and the restaurant also featured a long bar and oyster bar at the back.

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The walls were decorated with murals by Edward S. Simmons, cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, depicting the story of “Little Red Riding Hood.” (3)

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At the time, Jack’s was the only midtown restaurant with an all-night license. Dunston claimed to have thrown away the key after opening the restaurant, and rumor has it that when the license was briefly revoked for a few months during prohibition, no one could find a key to lock the doors at night.

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Popular dishes included “poached egg on lobster fat toast” (4) and “Irish bacon” (salt pork) with scrambled eggs, a favorite at 4 am with champagne and coffee.

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Jack’s was frequented by rowdy collegians, and when football celebrations and late nights got out of hand, the waiters assembled themselves into the infamous “flying wedge,” a V-formation that left offenders sprawled on the sidewalk: “Jack’s was a free and easy place – up to a certain point. When that point was reached – and every waiter was an adept at discerning it – the man desirous of going beyond it speedily found himself in Sixth Avenue.” (5)

* An article running in the New York Herald Tribune on March 22, 1926 (see above) indicated Dunston’s son William “Bill” Dunston had recently reopened Jack’s “after an eleven-month vacation,” around the corner from the original location at 103 West 43rd Street. Few further references to this Jack’s revamp—”Jack’s–Managed by Bill”—exist, and it was likely short-lived.

(1) New York Sunday News, 1922.
(2) Grimes, 2009.
(3) New York Times, 1925.
(4) Runyon, 1946.
(5) New York Herald Tribune, December 27, 1927.

Cover photo: Postcard. In “Jack in the Apple: The Long Colorful Career of Jack Spooner.” SpoonerCentral.com. Blog, 2011. Accessed March 9, 2021.