New York has always had two art worlds: the one in the studios and the one at the bar. The former produced the work; the latter produced the legends. If Paris had its cafés, New York had its dimly lit rooms with sticky floors, cheap whiskey, and artists who argued, seduced, collapsed, and occasionally painted the bathrooms.

Below is a guided stroll through the great artist bars of New York City — who drank where, who paid, what they ordered, and what survives.

The artists who created the major foundations of the last century were not marginal figures or cautionary tales. They were serious artists with long, complex careers — people who knew what it took to keep working through uncertainty, invisibility, and the strain of daily life. Their foundations exist because their work succeeded, not in place of it.