Menus in the Window

The club scene faded. The Tammany machine’s declining influence in the city dwindled and eventually dissolved with the likes of reformers La Guardia, Roosevelt, and Koch.

In 1942, the main floor became a restaurant, and this is when the building took on the face it wears now — the same frontage that carries show posters today carried daily dinner specials.

In 1961, the restaurant was converted into a theater. It opened the following year as the Village South Theatre with the original production of Jean Erdman's “The Coach with the Six Insides,” a dance-theater piece drawn from James Joyce's “Finnegans Wake.” It ran from November 1962 into the following March.

A hundred and thirty-six years after Astor's bricklayers finished the job, 15 Vandam finally had an audience.