place

Grotta Azzurra (restaurant)

1908 establishments in New York CityItalian-American culture in New York CityItalian restaurants in New York (state)Restaurants established in 1908Restaurants in Manhattan

Grotta Azzura, named for the Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri is an Italian restaurant on the corner of Mulberry Street and Broome Street in the Little Italy section of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The dining establishment was founded in 1908 by the Davino family and reopened in October 2003 in its original space after having been shut for six years. It is noted for having been a frequent haunt of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack as well as Enrico Caruso. In its later incarnation, it was a hangout for Heath Ledger, the young actor who spent some of his final days living in a rented loft space at 41 Broome street just down the street from the eatery.Grotta Azzura was one of the first places to serve "Lobster Fra Diavolo" (from the devil in Italian), an Italian American dish rather than a continental Italian one. Wine expert Victor Hazan and his wife the chef Marcella Hazan once told The New York Times that they first remembered eating it there circa 1940. Marcella went on to say "You brought me to that restaurant. I remember the dish clearly because it was so heavy and typical of Italian cooking in America. We don't eat like that in Italy".In 1977, a member of the restaurant's founding family, John Davino published a book of recipes associated with the establishment called The Recipes of the Grotta Azzurra.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Grotta Azzurra (restaurant) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Grotta Azzurra (restaurant)
Mulberry Street, New York Manhattan

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Phone number Website External links Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Grotta Azzurra (restaurant)Continue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.72044 ° E -73.9969 °
placeShow on map

Address

Grotta Azzurra (Blue Grotta)

Mulberry Street 177
10013 New York, Manhattan
New York, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Phone number

call+12129258775

Website
bluegrotta.com

linkVisit website

linkWikiData (Q18151145)
linkOpenStreetMap (6980177370)

Share experience

Nearby Places

Centre Market Place
Centre Market Place

Centre Market Place is a one block long street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, bordering Mulberry Street to the east, Grand Street to the south, Broome Street to the north, and Centre Street to the west. Centre Market Place was originally an extension of Orange Street (now Baxter Street, which starts at Grand Street, where Centre Market Place ends), before being formally renamed Centre Market Place in April 1837, after Centre Market, which was west of the street. At one time, the street was at the top of a high hill. Currently, local residents consider Centre Market Place to be part of the NoLIta neighborhood. At the southern end of the street, on the corner of Grand Street, is Onieal's restaurant, which features a cavernous wine cellar that once served as a speakeasy during Prohibition. Gentlemen of means would walk through the front of the Police Building, perhaps make a contribution to the "widows and orphan fund" and then walk through the cellar corridor connecting the two buildings.9 Centre Market Place was once the location to "The People's Bath House", a privately run public bathhouse built by the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. The People's Baths served as a model to which the City of New York would later build the city's truly public bathhouses. The block also included several gun stores including the John Jovino at 5 Centre Market Place, and the older Frank Lava Gunsmith at 6 Centre Market Place. The gun stores were part of a gun district owing to its proximity to the police headquarters at 240 Centre St. A row of townhouses at No. 1, 2, 4, and 5 were rehabilitated by two developers, a husband-and-wife team, incorporating found architectural castoffs scavenged from around the world as part of its facade.The street was home to many well-known writers, poets, and artists, including the noted crime photographer Weegee, who lived in a small studio apartment at 5 Centre Market Pl.

John Jovino Gun Shop
John Jovino Gun Shop

John Jovino Gun Shop or the John Jovino Company was a firearms dealer and factory located at 183 Grand Street, in Little Italy, a neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It was the oldest gun retailer in New York City and said to be the oldest gun shop in the United States. The store closed as a result of the financial hardships from the COVID-19 pandemic.The store, which was known for its sign depicting a revolver, was founded in 1911 by John Jovino who sold it to the Imperato family in the 1920s. It remains in the family. The store was once located at 5 Centre Market Place, part of a gun district behind the former police headquarters on Centre Street, but later moved to its present location. The store "does about $1 million worth of business annually", a figure which was higher before the New York Police Department opened an internal firearms bureau. The company used to own a gun factory in Brooklyn, the only one in the city, which made Colt M1911 pistols and reproductions of American Civil War-era Henry rifles. The company, known as Henry Repeating Arms, moved its headquarters from New York City to Bayonne, New Jersey, in 2013. Although many of its customers are in law enforcement, the company was near the top of a list of sellers whose guns were linked to New York City crimes in a 2003 report by a Columbia University researcher using data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Some 102 guns of 11,700 used in crimes and later identified came from the Jovino shop. According to current owners, until the 1980s the Jovino Company was "one of the biggest dealers in the country" and sold guns to many police departments. The study did not suggest any wrongdoing by the dealers listed (the store is not legally responsible for how people use the products they legally sell) and did not take into account that a store that has a higher volume of sales would most likely have a higher number of sales to people who later used the firearms in crimes, even if the store had a lower ratio of firearms used in crimes bought from the store per total sales than a store with a smaller volume of sales. A 2007 Village Voice article raised questions about the store's sales to United Nations diplomats from the Democratic Republic of Congo.The shop was seen in the film Serpico, in both season one, episode 13 ("A Death In The Family") and season 2, episode 5 ("Wedded Bliss") of Law & Order, very briefly in Mean Streets as well as The Brave One. The shop's Centre Market Street location was seen in the 1957 television series Decoy, appearing in the first season, episode four, titled To Trap a Thief.

Judson Health Center

Judson Health Center, founded in 1921, was an early New York City Community Health Center inspired by the Rev. Alonzo Ray Petty of the Baptist Judson Memorial Church located at 55 Washington Square South. Petty appealed to fellow Baptist and physician Eleanor A. Campbell to start the health and dental clinic, initially located in the church's basement, in order to provide care to the many Italian immigrants living on the west side of lower Manhattan. Many of these 45,000 residents suffered from poor nutrition; rickets was prevalent among many of the area's children. The health center quickly outgrew its space and in 1922 moved to Judson House at 237 Thompson Street. In 1924 the clinic provided healthcare to 22,000 visitors and also conducted 14,000 field visits, making the center the largest of its kind in the U.S. In 1950 the Center moved to 34 Spring Street and served residents living in the area bordered by Broadway, Washington Square and the Hudson River. The Center provided healthcare in over one million separate visits to residents and immigrants between 1921 and 1957, when Dr. Campbell was awarded the Star of Italian Solidarity by the Italian Government. Campbell, who refused any wages for her services throughout her lifetime, was born Eleanor Milbank Anderson, the daughter of philanthropist and public health advocate Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (1850-1921) and the artist Abraham Archibald Anderson (1846-1940). Judson Health Center continues to operate today at the Spring Street location under the auspices of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.