Arthur Bartlett Maurice says of it: "In the old-time novels of New York life visiting Englishmen invariably stopped at the Brevoort." Of this hotel more anon, since it has recently become knit into the fabric of the modern Village.
But a scant two blocks away from the Brevoort stands another hostelry which is indissolubly a part of New York's growth--especially the growth of her Artist's Colony.

It is the Lafayette, or as many of its habitues still love to call it--"The Old Martin." This, the first and most famous French restaurant of New York, needs a special word or two.

It must be considered alone, and not in the company of lesser and more modern eating places.
John Reed says that the "Old Martin" was the real link between the old Village and the new, since it was the cradle of artistic life in New York.

Bohemians, he declared, first foregathered there _as_ Bohemians, and the beginnings of what has become America's Latin Quarter and Soho there first saw the light of day--or rather the lights of midnight.
Jean Baptiste Martin who had been running a hotel in Panama during the first excavations there--made by the French, as you may or may not remember--came to New York in 1883.

He had been here the year before for a time and had decided the city needed a French hotel.