Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Brief History of Root Hill - 3 Years of Excitement (Birthday!)

In honor of our Birthday we have put together a brief sort of photo history of the locations of our cafe and of our last 3 years in this great neighborhood.

This clipping from July 1976 New York Magazine indicates that it became Joe's Italian Kitchen at one point. Our location seems to have been a Social Club for many many years, which is not surprising considering social clubs used to be very common in the area. In addition to this clipping AllNY.com indicates that this place at one time was called the Silver Bark Social Club. Neighbors in the area confirm this information. Also, two of our owners Michelle & Andrew have an Aunt May who hung out at the place when it was a social club.
Later just before Root Hill was converted into the cafe the location was home to a Family Car servers.
Finally we moved in and started causing trouble.
We got RSVP Architect Studio to come in a create a unique design for the space. Their design was awarded later in 2008 'Best of Year Merit Award' from Interior Design Magazine
During the renovation we painted the covering wood, which we briefly kept during the first year. The mural of dancing coffee cups was done by cartoonist Jennifer Camper. 
On April 1, 2008 we thought it'd be a funny prank to open a coffee shop in South Brooklyn, Gowanus. 

Then we thought it'd be really cool to add a mural to the side of the building in 2009. The mural was done by Katherine Gressel (check out her site!). You can also, read more on the mural here: The Mural.
Our friend Brian Trzeciak brought our 'roots' inside with this mural on the back wall in 2010. Brain also wrote a great story early called the The Tale of Root Hill, which you can find here
We then added the Trash Pony Bar sign for our night time venue that open in June 2010. 
The blogs over at TrashPonyBar.BlogSpot.com

What's Next?...well something special you can be sure...
We'd like to thank everyone for their continued support over these last 3 years. We are very honored to have such great people visiting our cafe and bar each day. Come by and celebrate with us April 1st; At 8pm one of Root Hill's favorite musicians, Matthew Brookshire, will be playing a few turns. 




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