Last Call at Coogan’s: The Life and Death of a Neighborhood Bar

Librarian Michaud (When Tito Loved Clara) delivers a stirring tribute to Coogan’s, a restaurant and bar in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. From its opening in 1985, when the neighborhood was at the mercy of drugs and gun violence, to the gentrification that pushed away many of its working-class and mostly Dominican population in the 2000s, owners Peter Walsh and Dave Hunt—and later, Tess O’Connor, who started as a bartender and ended as a partner—worked to make Coogan’s a welcoming place for everyone. Cops dropped in after their shifts, local politicians met to cut deals and listen to their constituents, staff from a nearby hospital came for lunch, and residents held wakes in one of its rooms. Both Walsh and Hunt “shared a belief in the promise of New York as an engine of social cohesion,” according to Michaud, a former regular who compares Coogan’s to “the most democratic institutions in the city—subways, parks, and libraries—which are open to all and encourage the comingling of people from different backgrounds.” A substantial rent increase, increased competition, and the Covid-19 pandemic ended Coogan’s run in March 2020. Earnest, evocative, and full of crisply rendered profiles of employees and patrons, this is a rewarding study of how communities are built. (June)