15 Facts About Romany Marie

Marie Marchand, known as Romany Marie, was a Greenwich Village restaurateur who played a key role in bohemianism from the early 1900s through the late 1950s in Manhattan.

Romany Marie's cafes were among the most interesting in New York's Bohemia and had an extensive following.

Romany Marie herself, who has been described as attractive and unusual, lively and generous, and a Village legend, was a dynamic character who provided free meals to those who needed them and was well known and beloved.

Romany Marie was a former anarchist who had attended Emma Goldman meetings before 1910, while she was still learning English.

Romany Marie became a leader in Greenwich Village, and not only among the habitues of her own establishments.

Playwright Eugene O'Neill was one of many needy artists whom Romany Marie fed when they could not pay for meals.

Romany Marie was said to have kept O'Neill alive during 1916 and 1917 by feeding him regularly in her kitchen when he was an alcoholic.

Romany Marie had been in Paris on a Guggenheim Fellowship and had been working for several months with Constantin Brancusi, who recommended that he visit Romany Marie's when he returned to the United States.

Museum of Modern Art curator Dorothy Canning Miller was a regular, as was her husband Holger Cahill, whose selection of paintings from Mark Tobey's 1929 solo exhibition at Romany Marie's was a turning point in Tobey's career.

One of the features of Romany Marie's establishments was the "Poets' Table" where "The Tramp Poet" Harry Kemp held forth with poets and non-poets alike including Paul Robeson, Edgard Varese, and Marsden Hartley.

From 1915 through 1923, Romany Marie's was in a tiny house at 20 Christopher Street, and, from 1923 through the late 1920s, at 170.

Romany Marie Marchand was of Jewish descent, born in Nichitoaia, Romania in 1885.

Romany Marie's father was Lupu Yuster and her mother, Esther Rosen, was a Jew.

Romany Marie once treated Mabel Dodge Luhan's husband Tony Luhan for a slipped disc, in the winter of 1940, when Luhan and author Frank Waters were visiting New York from Taos, New Mexico.

Romany Marie died at the age of 91 on January 6,2008.