The West End bar is located at the corner of 114th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. Since its establishment in 1911, the bar has served as a New York City institution, holding host to the many thirsty undergraduates of Columbia University for more than 90 years. Its slogan is, "Where Columbia Had Its First Beer." This article is about the street in New York City. ... Manhattan Borough,highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ... 1911 was a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... New York City, officially named the City of New York, is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. ... Columbia University is a private university in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. ... A mug of lager beer, showing the golden colour of the beer and the foamy head floating on top. ...

History

Located kitty-corner to the southwest corner of Columbia University's Morningside Heights campus, designed by famed architect Charles McKim in 1894, the bar has served as a watering hole for generations of thirsty Columbia students. In the early 1940s, in the formative days of the Beat generation, students including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Lucien Carr spent hours at the bar discussing their studies and their futures. In the 1960s, the bar played host to student activists upset about racial discrimination in the area and US foreign policy regarding Vietnam. Mark Rudd, who led the Columbia branch of Students for a Democratic Society and was a promninent member of the Weather Underground after his expulsion university in 1968, spent time at the bar as a student there. Morningside Heights is a neighborhood of the borough of Manhattan in New York City and is bound by the Upper West Side, Morningside Park, Harlem, and Riverside Park. ... The Universitätscampus Wien, Austria ( details) Campus (plural: campi) is Latin for field or open space. English gets the words camp and campus from this origin. ... Charles Follen McKim (August 24, 1847—September 14, 1909) was one of the most prominent American Beaux-Arts architects of the late nineteenth century, as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead, and White ( for list of works). ... The term beat generation was introduced by Jack Kerouac in approximately 1948 to describe his social circle to the novelist John Clellon Holmes (who published an early novel about the beat generation, titled Go, in 1952, along with a manifesto of sorts in the New York Times Magazine: This is... Allen Ginsberg, far left, at Airport Frankfurt, Germany Irwin Allen Ginsberg (IPA: ) (June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American Beat poet born in Paterson, New Jersey. ... Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, artist, and part of the Beat Generation. ... Lucien Carr (March 1, 1925–January 28, 2005) was a key figure in the Beat generation, and later an editor for UPI. Carr was a roommate of Allen Ginsberg at Columbia University in the 1940s and met Jack Kerouac through Jacks then-girlfriend (later his first wife) Edie Parker. ... The 1960s in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... Mark Rudd was the leader of the Columbia University chapter (branch) of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s. ... The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a radical student activist movement in the United states founded in 1959. ... Weatherman, also known as the Weather Underground Organization, was a US-based, self-described revolutionary organization of communist men and women formed by members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), splintering that organization in the process. ... 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ...

Soon after the heady days of the late 1960s, the bar shut its doors, and was left untended to for several years. During this time, it fell into disrepair.

In the early 1980s, Katie Gardner, a graduate of Columbia's school of journalism, bought the bar, rebuilt what had been destroyed and vandalized, and restored it to its former glory. // Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...

Present Day

With Gardner and her family still in control, the bar now serves a new generation of Columbia students. With a back room for beer pong, a basement area for parties, and a side room for dancing, the bar continues to be a hangout, especially amongst university freshmen. In recent times, the bar has become notorious for allowing underaged drinkers into the bar, only issuing a cursory look at identification, if looking at all. However, the bar has begun to crack down since it was shutdown by the police in February 2005 by the police, and it has now installed an ID-scanner. Beer Pong and Beirut are drinking games that involve propelling a table-tennis ball across a table with the goal of making the ball hit or land in one of several cups of beer. ... 2005 (MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

In February 2005, Playboy Magazine named The West End college bar of the month. Playboy is an adult entertainment magazine, or pornography magazine, founded in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, which has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc. ...

In late 2004, the bar began brewing its own brand of Ker O'Whack beer. The bar also serves food, including a widely popular Sunday brunch. The bar also recently installed flatscreen monitors for advertising, and has several televisions showing a regular stream of sports coverage. 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Brunch is a late morning meal between breakfast and lunch, as a replacement to both meals, usually eaten when one rises too late to eat breakfast, or as a specially-planned meal. ...