Ear Inn

The Ear Inn got its name from one letter and some paint¹. In 1977 a group of artists including Sari Dienes and Rip Hayman bought the lease and reopened the bar¹. They painted out part of the B in the BAR sign to make it EAR, after The Ear, a music magazine they published upstairs¹.

The house goes back to 1817, when James Brown, an African-American veteran of the Revolutionary War, built it only several feet from the Hudson shoreline^{1, 2}. A tavern occupied the ground floor from at least 1835¹. In 1890 an Irish immigrant, Thomas Cloke, bought the house¹. During Prohibition the restaurant became a speakeasy¹. After repeal it was known simply as The Green Door¹.

The city made the building a landmark in 1969¹, and it joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1983¹. When we listed it, we said it was more than a landmark, just a great place for a drink, with the summer crowd spilling onto the sidewalk and the cobblestones. The bar is said to be haunted², and Hayman once found a revolver from the early 1900s hidden in a flue³.

The Ear Inn marked 200 years in 2017⁴. Jerry Walker, co-owner of the Ear Inn and of Walker's, died in December 2025⁵. The Ear carries on: in April 2026 it was still hosting its Sunday Night Jams^{5, 6}.