In July 1977, three starving artists opened a tiny one-room café with a toaster-oven on a tiny one-block street in New York's fabled Greenwich Village: The Cornelia Street Café.         
 
On its tenth birthday, having grown to include three dining-rooms, two bars, two kitchens, and a basement performance space in which some 700 shows unfolded every year, it was declared:
 
"A culinary as well as a cultural landmark” Proclamation, City of New York. 
 
Over its more than four decades it would become a New York City cultural icon, a culinary destination, and a catalyst for new work in every conceivable genre (and quite a few inconceivable ones): from science to stilt walking, from Afro-Caribbean poetry to Latin jazz, from Shakespeare at Midnight to the entire Iliad as an experiment in Breakfast Theatre; it was a home for The Songwriters Exchange, the birthplace of The Vagina Monologues, and the recipient of two Guinness world records--for longest solo piano performance (52+ hours) and largest keyboard ensemble (175 pianists playing Pachelbel's Canon from one end of Cornelia Street to the other); in short it was “the bohemian café of your dreams” (Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Laureate).
 
In this personal slice of New York history, Robin Hirsch, actor, author, Oxford and Fulbright scholar, but, more importantly, Minister of Culture/Wine Czar/Dean of Faculty at The Cornelia Street Café—takes us behind the scenes to document the antics (in the venue, on stage, in the kitchen, on the street) and demonstrate the love and enthusiasm that emanated from this remarkable New York melting pot to the city it called home and the wider world that passed through its doors. 
 
“The best damn Greenwich Village hotspot ever” Daniel Levy, songwriter
 
“A range of activities so varied, unusual and enthralling that the sheer scope of what goes on within those walls could unsettle a sound mind” Bob Harrington, Nightlife Magazine
 
“Robin Hirsch: the Cornelia Street catalyst of New York’s cultural life”   Oliver Sacks, neurologist/author
 
Due out from Wordville in August 2025
AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW.