There has been a bar on this corner of Broadway for as long as almost anyone in the neighborhood can remember. The room is small and wood-paneled, the light is low, and the jukebox has been the loudest thing in it for the better part of a century.
As the story goes, the place was already pouring before Prohibition ended. It ran quietly as a speakeasy, then went legit the moment it could, in 1933. It was founded by George Kaye, whose name has been over the door, in one spelling or another, ever since. The two names locals use, George Kaye's and Geo Kaye's, are really just the same sign read two ways.
The Kaye family kept the bar for sixty-odd years. In 1995, two buyers took it on from the estate of George's son, Bob Kaye. One ran the days and one ran the nights, and the room carried on without missing a beat. It is still a neighborhood bar in the truest sense: no kitchen, one wall that rotates local art, and a crowd that treats first-timers like they'll be back.
Still in use after ninety years
The wood bar you lean on and the icebox behind it are the originals, the same ones George Kaye opened with. The 1950s cash register still rings. Not a recreation. The real thing, worn smooth by decades of elbows.
One of the bar's longtime owners first walked in around 1980, when the manager, Guido "Ric" Riccoboni, greeted him at the door. He was the kind of host who announced a newcomer to the whole room and wouldn't let them buy their own drinks on the first night. That welcome is more or less the house style, and it has outlived everyone who started it.