In an unfinished poem written in the early 1860s, Walt Whitman memorialized "The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse." Under the low-hanging ceiling of the underground pub sometimes referred to as "Pfaff's Cave," Whitman drew inspiration from the creative energy of what one nineteenth-century observer called "the trysting-place of the most careless, witty, and jovial spirits of New York,—journalists, artists, and poets." (The image to the right, for example, depicts a young William Dean Howells meeting Whitman for the first time at Pfaff's.) Visitors to The Vault at Pfaff's have the opportunity to experience the vitality of Whitman's favorite "trysting-place" by exploring the art and literature that helped to shape an emerging conception of New York City as the artistic, literary, and intellectual center of the United States.
The Vault at Pfaff's opened for public access in September of 2006. Presently, the site includes brief biographies of approximately 150 people who were connected to the bohemian scene at Pfaff's, as well as an annotated bibliography of over four thousand texts by and about the Pfaff's bohemians. (Many of these texts have already been annotated, but the annotation process is still ongoing.) The majority of the texts in this bibliography are from The New York Saturday Press, the short-lived but influential literary journal that many Pfaffians contributed to. All 157 issues of The Saturday Press have been digitally reproduced here. The other texts in this bibliography include nineteenth-century documents by and about the Pfaff's bohemians, as well as related twentieth-century scholarship. When an electronic version of one of these texts is available elsewhere on the World Wide Web, an external link has been provided to facilitate further research.
As work continues on The Vault at Pfaff's, biographies of individuals who have been identified as Pfaffians but who do not currently appear on the site will be added, as will further annotations of the works in the database. At a later date, the site will also include a set of introductions to the historical, social, and cultural contexts within which the Pfaffians worked, along with teaching modules designed to help secondary and post-secondary educators guide their students through the texts and issues presented here. A potential addition to the site could be the inclusion of visualization technologies to illustrate the web of connections between various of the Pfaff's bohemians. Such technologies would allow the data that has been and will be archived in The Vault at Pfaff's to be presented in a manner that will dynamically visualize the reciprocal influences between the patrons of Pfaff's.
The Vault at Pfaff's is created and maintained by Edward Whitley and Rob Weidman, with Megan Norcia, Abigail Aldrich, Elizabeth Wiggins, and others. See the staff page for a complete list of contributors.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 2.5 License.
