Garden Cafeteria, ca. 1977.

Opened in June 1941 as the Garden Cafeteria by Charles Metzger, an Austrian immigrant, the restaurant and hall-for-hire was a popular meeting spot for writers of the Jewish Daily Forward (whose building was four doors down) and Jewish intellectuals. Supposedly a restaurant in this space dated to earlier in the century and was also popular among the Jewish Socialist crowd, including Leon Trotsky (who wrote for the Forward for a time in the 1910s).

The Cafeteria was opened 24 hours a day and was very successful for Metzger. It was a dairy restaurant that adhered to Jewish dietary laws. Customers got a ticket upon arriving, and it got punched with every item you ordered over whatever period of time you were there. Patrons could sit for hours (and did) and paid for everything together before they left. The Cafeteria closed in 1983 and is currently a Chinese food restaurant.