Here's another example of an older, traditional traditional "railroad-car"-like diner from 1939 on 34th Street in Manhattan

From the WPA Archives

Another example of a traditional diner is in the bottom left corner of this picture. It was the "Jefferson Diner" at 6th Avenue and Greenwich Avenue. This diner, though at the bottom of Greenwich Avenue, was never mentioned by Hopper or Levin as a possible inspration.

Here are some photos of the "hamburger-and-fries" type chain diner. Since the 30's they have also resembled what we recognize now as White Castle hamburger restaurants - smooth white boxes, often topped with turrets or towers with teethlike walls. These were all either on or very near Greenwich Avenue.

Example of a "white box" diner - The "Castle Turret" at Seventh Avenue South and 12th Street, north/west corner (long demolished).

From the NYPL Digital Archives

This is the same view from further back.

From the NYPL Digital Archives

Here's another example of a "white box" chain diner - Riker's - at West 4th Street and 7th Avenue South. In shape, this could have given inspiration to Nighthawks but it wasn't on Greenwich Avenue, where Hopper said Nighthawks was based.

From the NYPL Digital Archives

A small hamburger restaurant at West 4th Street and Sixth Avenue.

From the NYPL Digital Archives

This White Tower diner was literally directly across the street from the florist shop - on Greenwich Street, west side, between 7th Avenue South and Perry. But it also doesn't resemble Nighthawks, though at night you could probably look in through the large window and see people eating under bright lights. (More on this store later)

Here's the same shot from further back. The building was located on the back end of a triangular gas station parking lot between Greenwich Avenue and 7th Avenue South.

From the NYPL Digital Archives

Reason #5 - Because 70 Greenwich Ave is small. The restaurant in Nighthawks is small to begin with and Hopper said he made it "bigger" than the actual restaurant. So the restaurant he based it one must have been pretty small.

The "Nighthawks" restaurant has about 7 stools across the front. If Hopper increased the size of the actual restaurant he saw, then the original might only have had 4 or 5 stools. That would take up about 10 feet - They could easily fit into 70 Greenwich Avenue, which measures about 25 feet across.

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper; collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

Here's a close up of the florist store. You can see it's about 25 feet wide. To it's right is an empty store for rent.

Here's a picture inside the middle of the florist shop. It's about 10 feet across at this point. (It's hard to photograph because it's so full of flowers.)

And here's a picture of the southern end. The wall is mirrored to increase the feeling of space.

Here's a close-up of the empty store for rent next to the florist shop. The back wall is slanted like the back window in Nighthawks. This actually looks like it could fit the actual restaurant featured in Nighthawks.

So if the florist shop next door was the inspiration for Nighthawks, and Hopper said he "made the restaurant bigger" - it would look this size - which it does.

Here's the space at a later date, fully stocked.

Artists often expand and contract space to make pictures work. Look at the turkey in the famous picture below by Norman Rockwell. That turkey would about 45 pounds and that grandmother's back would be snapping if that were the real size.

Norman Rockwell, Freedom From Want (1943), Norman Rockwell Museum

Notice the difference below between a real Manhattan east-west street width and the Nighthawk's street width. The Hopper street is only one lane wide, practically a bike lane.

Speaking of streets, I find it interesting that Hopper made the stores behind the restaurant into retail stores that resemble those in his painting "Early Sunday Morning." Mostly, because virtually all the east-west streets that Greenwich Ave crosses are residential, so, if anything, the background would most likely be in the form of apartments or brownstones.

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper; collection of the Art Institute of Chicago

These are studies that Hopper made while creating Nighthawks. In the lower one, he actually did make a small residential stoop. However, since there are (or were) similar stoops on practically every street off of Greenwich Avenue, it doesn't really help pinpoint the corner.

From the collection of and (c) the Whitney Museum

If 70 Greenwich is indeed the space Hopper used for Nighthawks, he may have conjured up his own background because he did not think that the background presently that was there would be "right" for the painting. The background at that time would have been this hospital (now demolished) on the northeast corner of 11th Street and 7th Avenue. 70 Greenwich Avenue (the florist shop) is on the bottom, right.

There is one thing that I noticed in one of the windows above the stores, however, that I've never read about before: a cat! Is he hungrily and metaphorically gazing down at the "hawks" as prey? You can find him in the second window from the left in the painting two pictures below this.

Here's a similar cat I found on Flickr, to illustrate my point."

From Flickr

Reason #6- Because Hopper painted a cigar sign above the restaurant and not the name of a restauant.

Most restaurants don't have huge cigar signs over them. They usually have have the name of the restaurant prominantly displayed.

But small, fountain-type store/restaurants don't need to name themselves. But they need to show what they sell.

As you've seen from the many earlier pictures of the store at 70 Greenwich Avenue, the space has had a long tradition of advertising cigars, because as a combination fountain restaurant and cigar/candy store, they long sold cigars.

So the fact that Hopper put a huge Phillies sign over the Nighthawks restaurant further supports that this was his probable inspiration, not another real-named restaurant somewhere along the block.

Hopper's Phillies sign was pretty authentic. Here are some other Phillies' signs of the day and also one for a Cremo cigar that looks like the Nighthawks sign.

Reason #7 - Because the interior of the restaurant is in the shape of a triangle.

Most restaurants are rectangular. The real 70 Greenwich Avenue is a triangular space. This also lends creedence to the theory that when Hopper described it as a place on Greenwich where "two streets meet." They meet at a triangle.

If you look at Nighthawks closely, you can see there's not a door for the fountain man to get behind the counter. How does he get inside? Is he proverbiably trapped in there forever? Or is it a sly reference to the existantial "no exit?"

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper; collection of Art Institute of Chicago

Reason #8 - Because both have a similar interior support pole behind the glass.

Because both the Nighthawks restaurant and the space at 70 Greenwich are "prows," they need roof support. The metal beam holding up the roof is clearly seen in both images. You would most likly not find these beams if the space was a one-story restaurant, as the supporting beams would be part of the brick/steel structure.

Reason #9 - Because the White Tower hamburger restaurant across the street could have given Hopper ideas about the lighting, the counter, the salt and pepper and sugar shakers, the stools, the bent-over fountainman and his cap, and even "the man with his back to us."

This is an actual photo from the White Tower restaurant that used to be on Greenwich Avenue on the south part of the gas station lot that took up the corner of Greenwich Avenue and Seventh Avenue South. It is courtesy of the owner of the former White Tower hamburger chain, T. Brock Saxe, who sent it to me at my request in 2006 along with a few more photographs, seen below. The restaurant was called White Tower #2, as it was the second one built in the chain.

Courtesy of T. Brock Saxe

Note the many similarities to the interior of Nighthawks. .....the man with his back to us.
.....the chef with the white hat bent over.
.....the stools.
.....the salt, pepper, and sugar shakers.
.....the the bright lighting..

The picture we just looked at is circa the mid-1950's. I showed it first because it has more activity in it. The picture below this is from the 1940's - Hopper's era. The florescent lighting is different, but most of the rest is the same. But note the counter. Unlike the Formica counter from the 1950's, this counter is made of dark wood very much like like the counter in Nighthawks.

Courtesy of T. Brock Saxe

Hopper could have literally sat on one of these stools and looked out the window to his left and seen what is now the florist shop across the street and sketch it as he drank coffee.

Here is where it was located in relation to the florist shop.

In fact, here's a panorama of what Hopper would have seen had he looked out the window. The florist shop is circled in red. CLICK THE PHOTO TO ENLARGE IT

This is another photo of the White Tower #2 restaurant at Greenwich Avenue and 7th Avenue South from the New York Public Library, so you can see where it was located.

And here's another photo of White Tower #2 sent to me by Mr. Saxe.

Courtesy of T. Brock Saxe

When I began researching Nighthawks in 2005, I had read in many guidebooks that the painting was based on a "diner" that was in the parking lot at Greenwich Avenue and 7th Avenue South, below the intersection called Mulry Square. This turned out to be a guess turned into a fact by heresay.

Sanborn Maps and Bromley Maps (NYC tax and city planning maps with outlines of buildings and numbers indicating how many floors they have) from back as far as 1938 never showed a diner (or any other structure) in the tip of the parking lot, but a search of the NYC Municipal Archives, using the block-and-lot of the corner, turned up the White Tower building.

So I tracked down the ownership by looking through old books about chain diners and sent Mr. Saxe a request for these photos which he graciously provided. I quickly concluded, however, that the exterior of Nighthawks didn't look like this diner, so I continued my search up and down the avenue for Hopper's inspiration.

My three kids had gone to school at P.S. 41 at the other end of the block from the florist shop, and I had always told them that I thought Hopper had based it on the florist shop space, simply by it's wedged appearance and see-through glass sides. But I had to eliminate all the other possibilities up and down the Avenue before I could, with some evidence, point to it as the most possible inspiration, and that search, done sporadically, took a backseat for a while to the other searches on PopSpots. That's why it took me so long to put this together.

Mr. Saxe also provided me this photos of White Tower #2 in the 1950's, when it had been remodeled. Here it is:

Courtesy of T. Brock Saxe

Quick comedy relief: an old ad for a fountain "jerk" in the outfit of the day.

The White Tower building closed and fell into disrepair in the 1970's as you can see from this photo.

Later it was demolished.

Conclusion:

Nighthwaks was definitely based on one particular restaurant on Greenwich Avenue. Hopper said it himself when he said that he "made the restaurant bigger." What I tried to do, was show by reason of elimination, that the logical ONE restaurant was most likely the one at 70 Greenwich Avenue, because:

1) It's extreme, approximately 30-degree "v" shape resembles that of Nighthawks. Only 4 other prime candidates have close to that extreme angle. But they don't have the other characteristics.
2) It's the sole store that is partly in a building and partly in a prow. The small black triangle on the roof delienates the building above the restaurant. and indicates the beginning of the prow.
3) It had a cigar sign instead of a restauraunt name since the 1920's . And Hopper's restaurant has no name, just a Phillies sign.
4) It has similar supporting poles behind the windows.
5) It has a history of being a restaurant; a small fountain restaurant, but a restaurant nonetheless.

No other space on Greenwich Avenue has all these characteristics.

So, although there are also many characteristics of the Flatiron Building in the painting, since Hopper said he based it on a building on Greenwich Avenue, I would say 70 Greenwich Avenue fits the bill best.

Let me add this. I put forth four other spaces with extreme "v" angles that Hopper could have based the painting on. Each could easily have been a restaurant. And he may have based 99% of the painting on one of them. But in the end, the one main characteristic of the painting is that Hopper set it in a long prow, so, to me, that characteristic trumps all the rest. So if you gotta pick one restaurant, that he probably based it on - because Hopper indicated by his quotes that there was one restaurant in particular - I will go with 70 Greenwich Avenue.

So go down and buy some flowers and see for yourself!

THE INTERIOR of "Nighthawks

While my primary aim was to discuss the location of Nighthawks, along the way I came up with some interesting information about the interior. Here it is.

A Google search for the "Dixie Kitchen": yielded this abstract from a collection of 1970's "The New Yorker" articles. It mentions Hopper as a frequent visit to a "Dixie Kitchen" in the basement of a building at Fifth Avenue and 48th Street I underlined those lines).

"Talk story about the Dixie Kitchen, which closed down the other day. It was a cafeteria in the basement of an office building on the northeast corner of 5th and 48th Street. It lasted 46 years serving excellent food at reasonable prices. Its two proprietors were: Mrs. Margaret Deane & Miss Ethel Dilman. The bill of fare featured real American home cooking, with an emphasis on real Southern home cooking. The Dixie Kitchen never advertised except in the "Christian Science Monitor." Mrs. Deane grew up in Virginia & attended Randolf-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg. Miss Dilman is from Finger Lakes country, north of Ithaca; she's a Vassar graduate. The best-known work of art in the Dixie Kitchen was a signed reproduction of Edward Hopper's painting of an all-night lunch counter. Mr Hopper frequented the Dixie Kitchen. Mrs' Dean's husband often helped out with the bookkeeping. Roses were brought in by a black counterman named Bert North, who lived in New Rochelle and raised flowers. Last month Mrs. Dean and Miss Dilman decided that it was time for them to retire." (Anthony Hiss, The Talk of the Town, "Farewell," The New Yorker, January 3, 1970, p.22)

Image of a typical restaurant coffee urn popular in the 1930's to 1950's.

Hopper's Studies for the coffee urns from 1943

From the collection of and (c) the Whitney Museum

The Dixie Kitchen would have been in the basement of this corner building at the northeast corner of 48th Street and Fifth Avenue.

From Google Street Views

Image of a coffee urn from "The Killers" - a short story by Ernst Hemingway in Scribner's magazine. The urn can be seen under the face of the man at the left in this xerox from a microfilm at the library.

This is the beginning of the short story, "The Killers" by Ernest Hemingway that starts with two tough looking characters walking in to a diner."

Here are the opening scenes from the 1946 movie "The Killers" (Universal Pictures). Note the resemblance in mood to Nighthawks painted 4 years earlier. Hopper was influenced by Hemingway's short story. and the director of the film was later influenced by Nighthawks.

The actual diner where they filmed the scene is in Summit, New Jersey.

Notice the resemblance, especially with the man at left with the fedora.

That's the entry. Thanks for stopping by the PopSpots all-night online cafe.