A new restaurant for Newburgh
Sixties flashback with ’09 panache
Don Bash is one of the business owners putting the “new” back in Newburgh.
The chef worked during New York City’s ’60s and ’70s heady days in places like Studio 54 and Andy Warhol’s favorite hot spot, Max’s Kansas City, and was decidedly a dedicated urbanite. When he and his wife Michelle visited some friends who had discovered Newburgh’s charming town homes, digging underneath the rubble of what urban renewal and “white flight” had left behind, they were tempted to go north from New York City.
By 1982, Don and Michelle Bash packed up their Manhattan apartment and trekked to Newburgh, where homes were relatively cheap, but crime and unemployment were steep and talk of bringing the city back to life was, well, a lot of talk. Today, standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass front of the city’s newest restaurant, The Wherehouse, it is hard to picture it as the Bashes found it: boarded up with plywood, with the remnants of an old beauty shop behind its graffiti-laden wooden panels.
Sitting at the corner of Liberty and Ann streets in a neighborhood once populated by mom-and-pop stores in a busy city, Beautyrama’s hidden charm was discovered by Bash and his designers, River Architects, based in Cold Spring. Ripping down the exterior, they discovered iron columns that had been covered for years by plywood. More was waiting inside. Brick walls, solid-wood flooring and tin ceilings were just part of the treasure trove discovered underneath layers of neglect.
Today, the 2,500-square-foot restaurant has a little bit of everything to remind baby boomers of those summer days when Jimi Hendrix rocked the airwaves and the 1967 Summer of Love was in full bloom. Framed covers of the Woodstock generation’s albums, posters from the Fillmore East as well as a collection of bottles discovered during the “quasi-archaeological dig” Bash and contractors went through while getting the restaurant ready have been delightfully incorporated into the surroundings. Today, a gleaming copper countertop and a comfortable array of tables, chairs and sofas await diners.
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