Noho Star To Close After 32 Years

NOHO, NY — The longtime neighborhood restaurant Noho Star is closing this year after 32 years in the neighborhood.

Noho Star, located at 330 Lafayette St., has been a neighborhood fixture in the area since 1975. The restaurant's sister bar, the Temple Bar, will also close at the end of the year.

The news was first reported by the neighborhood blog Bowery Boogie, which noticed a state filing that said 54 employees at the Noho Star and 13 employees at the Temple Bar would lose their jobs when the establishment closed for "economic" reasons.

The restaurant's manager Julia Lisowski said via phone that the restaurant's owner had died recently, which in part prompted the decision to close.

The restaurant's owner George Schwarz died in December 2016. Schwarz was a Jewish man born in Germany in 1931 before fleeing the Nazi regime with his family. In the U.S.. Schwarz worked as a doctor in a Greenwich Village hospital.

"While a physician at St. Vincent's, George recognized the paucity of high- quality, affordable restaurants in the West Village during the 1970s," according to his obituary in the New York Times. "Determined to improve his city, George opened the restaurants Elephant & Castle and One Fifth. Later, he added The Noho Star and Temple Bar to his roster of restaurants, and he saved from the wrecking ball the renowned Keen's Chop House."

The restaurant's last day open is Sunday, Lisowski said.

Image credit: Google Maps