Luchow's - Latter Years and Demise

Latter Years and Demise

August Lüchow died in 1923, and ownership of the business passed to Victor Eckstein, who was his nephew-in-law. Prohibition had begun in 1921, and the restaurant had to survive on the strength of its cooking and traditions. After the first few years, Luchow's stopped celebrating New Year's Day, as the customers who brought their own flasks of alcohol were too rowdy. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Luchow's was the recipient of the first café liquor license in New York City.

The umlaut in "Lüchow's" was restored in 1950, when Jan Mitchell, an entrepreneur who rescued several New York restaurants - including the Longchamps chain – bought the restaurant from Eckstein after five years of persuasion. Mitchell restored the tradition of holding week-long galas such as the annual Venison Festival, Bock Beer Festival, a goose fest, and so on, but one of the biggest attractions at Lüchow's, and a tremendous customer draw, was the nightly lighting of the Christmas tree, which began around Thanksgiving and lasted till New Year's.

By the time Lüchow's reached its final iteration on 14th Street, it was owned by one of the two big restaurant conglomerates in New York City at the time, Restaurant Associates, having passed from the hands of the other, Riese Brothers, a couple of years before. Riese Brothers is a restaurant management company, with such names as Schrafft's, Longchamps, Chock Full o' Nuts and Childs figuring prominently in their real estate-oriented business formula. Over time the quality of Lüchow's food and service had taken a turn for the worse, with stemware abandoned in favor of short glasses, and no tablecloths at lunch, according to employees of the period.

With completion in 1979 of the final round of refurbishments at 14th Street by Restaurant Associates, whose principal, Peter Aschkenasy, was friends with Mayor Ed Koch, providing much needed publicity, the place was seemingly resurrected, and there were a few years of capacity Christmas season business. Architecture students made their weekly visits to view the eclectic bric-a-brac and statuary, stained glass skylights and art nouveau appointments; and it was said that the frequently mentioned "1500 couverts" (pronounced "covers") in one day occurred multiple times.

By the 1980s the area around 14th Street at Union Square had deteriorated considerably. The park itself was rundown and in serious need of refurbishment, the Academy of Music opera house and Tammany Hall had been torn down long before to build the headquarters of Consolidated Edison, the discount S. Klein's department store across the street was closed and abandoned, and the movie theatre next to the restaurant had become a rock concert venue, initially also dubbed the "Academy of Music", but later changed to the "Palladium". There was little left in the neighborhood to attract the type of clientele that Luchow's was intended to appeal to, and in 1982-83 the 14th Street location was abandoned, dealing a serious blow to efforts to revitalize the neighborhood. The saleable contents were auctioned off, and the business was moved to a spot below street level at 51st Street and Broadway, with the aim of attracting Theater District crowds, and the umlaut was dropped once again.

The Theatre District restaurant lasted only a few years longer, but Luchow's lived on at other locations, notably Penn Station, Restaurant Associates having decided to branch out and make use of the famous name.

After Lüchow's moved out, the 14th Street location was briefly "The Palace", a restaurant-discothèque, and later a gay bar. An attempt was made to have the building demolished in 1985, and it stood vacant for several years, never achieving protected landmark status despite local efforts. The fire on December 9, 1992 that finally consumed a good part of the interior is said to have been started by homeless people living in the building. The remains were demolished in 1995 and replaced by University Hall, a New York University dormitory and multi-use complex having retail frontage on 14th Street. Before the dorm was built, NYU announced plans to "revive" Luchow's by including a street-level "Gay 90's" themed restaurant in the building, which they intended to call "Luchow's" if permission could be obtained to do so, but these plans never came to fruition.