Joel's Bohemia

Joel's Bohemia was a two-story all-night restaurant near Times Square, New York from 1902 to 1925, catering to artists, writers, revolutionaries, and other bohemians.

A table in the corner of the dining-room had a sign on it, starting at 11 o'clock, reading "Reserved for Literature and Revolution",[1] "where famous Hispanic-American revolutionaries used to sit".

[1] [H]is Bohemia was... the meeting-place of heretics and radicals of all breeds: fleeing, out-at-heels generals from Mexico; hunted, unshaven admirals from Honduras; common, every-day White House dynamiters from Guatemala; bawling Egyptian Anarchists; loud-mouthed sappers and minors of the social edifice in general who would shup up for a beer and a load of beans; barroom Napoleons and millennial crackpots of all nationalities.

Several artists painted scenes set in the restaurant: Joel's was famous for its celebrity wall of drawings and caricatures, some by Carlo de Fornaro, an opponent of Porfirio Díaz.

It was never a gaudy, nor a gilt-edged establishment, that one on Forty-first street, with its green-tinted door; and its heydays were ten, or even fifteen years behind when it surrendered to the inevitable.

1910s postcard showing celebrity wall at Joel's
"Cartoon Room" (postcard)
"Joel's Literary Corner; Once Mexican Revolutionary Table" The Literary Table at Joel's Bohemia (New York), ca. 1911, showing Joel Rinaldo (proprietor), Michael Monahan, Leonard Charles van Noppen, Edwin Markham, Booth Tarkington, Benjamin de Casseres, and Shaemas O'Sheel
Carlo de Fornaro, "The Literature and Revolution Table", c1911
Cubist oil painting
Max Weber, "Joel's Café"