Hangouts: The Place Downstairs

To Novelist John O'Hara. it was "a kind of cave inhabited by giants of journalism." To generations of New York Herald Tribune men, it was the place they meant when they said they were "going downstairs." To Boulevardier Lucius Beebe, it was "an arena fragrant with the souvenirs of mighty contests with bottles, wits and fists." Its formal name was the Artist & Writers' Club, but to its habitues it was simply Bleeck's. Last week Longtime Owner John Bleeck. the ruddy, white-maned Dutchman who for three decades made the place on Manhattan's...