El Faro Restaurant

The story

When El Faro closed in 2012, New York lost its oldest Spanish restaurant — an 85-year run ended not by indifference but by an inability to raise $80,000 in fines and expenses. Manuel Rivas and Edwardo Cabana opened it in 1927 on Greenwich Street, planting a Spanish bar and grill among the Irish meatpacking workers who filled that corner of the West Village. The neighborhood eventually became known as Little Spain. In 1996 the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation gave El Faro a Village Award, and a 2010 documentary later preserved its memory on film.