Ghost Signs of NYC: Village Gate

Art D’Lugoff opened the Village Gate in 1958 on the ground floor and basement of the former Mills House №1, a hotel for homeless men. The basement had been the hotel’s laundry room. By the time the Village Gate closed in February 1994, it had become a Greenwich Village icon.

D’Lugoff was a bigger-than-life impresario who used the club to avocate for social causes as well as entertain. When Paul Robeson and…