Another Times Square landmark is about to disappear.
Smith’s Bar, the storied watering hole at Eighth Avenue and West 44th Street, will shutter Thursday due to lease issues, according to the Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York blog.
Workers at the bar with the notoriously defective neon signs deferred all questions Monday to “Bobby,” who was holding court at a table with a series of men in suits.
“We have no comment,” Bobby said repeatedly, also deflecting questions about his role at the bar.
But Charlie Roach, 83, who helped out at the bar for almost 30 years in exchange for food, outlasting a series of owners, was happy to reminisce.
“I’m gonna miss the place,” said Roach, who lives in a nearby hotel. “I’ve been here so many years! This place opened up in 1954.” He joined on, he said, when a man named Eddie Maguire owned the joint. “Eddie died when he retired around 2004,” Roach said. “His son sold the place but the new bosses told me they’d keep me on.”
Roach recounted noir stories of the bar’s grittier years: In 1990 one patron killed another and was discovered by cops to be carrying ID belonging to a Bay Ridge man who was also found dead in his home.
In 1994, a depressed NYPD officer killed himself at a table Christmas morning. Thieves used to infiltrate the place “steal money off the bar, ladies pocketbooks and everything else,” Roach said.
Roach said that the N.Y. Hotel-Motel Trades Council owned the building, but The Council did not respond to an inquiry asking for a statement about Smith’s.
No information could be obtained about the disposition of the bar’s famous neon signs.
Roach said he planned to spend his days from now on “walking in the park, feeding pigeons. I love pigeons. People take pictures of me because the pigeons are all over me.”
