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Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern, Neighborhood Fixture, to Close End of Month

Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern will close on Feb. 28. (Eden, Janine and Jim via Flickr)

Feb. 13, 2019 By Laura Hanrahan

Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern, a beloved Williamsburg institution, will be serving its last drink at the end of the month.

The dive bar, known for its cheap drinks, good tunes and proximity to the L train, will close its doors on Feb. 28.

The bar’s namesake, Rosemary Bleday, has worked at the bar since her parents first opened it at Green Street and Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint in 1955. The bar later moved to its current location at 188 Bedford Ave. where Bleday, now 86, still tends bar, pouring out bang-for-your-buck $4 Budweisers.

With the landscape of the neighborhood, and Bedford Avenue in particular, having shifted drastically in the past decade, Rosemary’s was one of the few remaining pieces of old Williamsburg in the area.

News of the bar’s closing, first reported by Gothamist, was met with an outpour of grief from local residents, calling it the “end of an era.”

According to Bleday’s Grandson Eric Carson, demolition of the buildings next door has put Rosemary’s, and the apartment above where Bleday lives, at risk of losing structural integrity.

“Unfortunately in doing that—them knocking down two buildings on either side of us, being a wood frame building—according to an engineer report, puts us at serious risk for damage,” Carson told Gothamist. “And my grandmother living up here wouldn’t be safe or conducive to running a business.”

There are no plans to relocate the bar to another location, Carson said.

Bleday is currently in the hospital after being admitted to the ICU with bruised ribs and a collapsed lung on Feb. 1.

The bar owners did not immediately respond to request for comment.

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