Chronicles: Marie’s Crisis Cafe
From a respectable home, into a brothel and then later, in the 1890s, a bar, Marie’s has seen it all, even weathering Prohibition as a speakeasy. The oddly named cafe is steeped in more than sorted history though, it is on this very spot where revolutionary and statesman Thomas Paine died in 1809, in the wood framed house which stood before the current brick structure in 1839. It is from Thomas Paine that Marie’s receives half its name, after his “Crisis Papers” in which the famed line “These are the times that try men’s souls” was first written. It is Thomas Paine who first laid out the reasons why American had to break from England in his paper “Common Sense,” forming the groundwork for revolution. The Marie comes from the original owner, a Frenchwoman by the name of Marie Dumont.
Marie’s Crisis Cafe
59 Grove Street, New York, NY – (212) 243-9323
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