Run by Trinidad-native Connie Williams, the Calypso is described by biographer David Leeming as "a small restaurant across from the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street" in Greenwich Village.
29 December 1936
Berenice Abbott for Works Progress Administration
Image in public domain
A photograph of its façade, published by Trinidad & Tobago Newsday, shows a modest, basement-level storefront with a worn street number and tropical decor on either side of the entrance (view image HERE).
Find images of Connie Williams inside the Calypso by Berenice Abbott (circa 1948) HERE ...
... and HERE (Williams is wearing a patterned dress).
Leeming devotes a single paragraph to the restaurant (which he calls a "café) in Amazing Grace, his biography of Beauford. He devotes almost two entire pages to the establishment in James Baldwin, his biography of Baldwin.
Beauford introduced Baldwin to Williams in 1943 after Baldwin's stepfather died and Baldwin moved from Harlem to Greenwich Village. Williams hired Baldwin as a waiter, and Leeming indicates that she became a surrogate mother to him. He says that Baldwin, Beauford, and a young Black writer named Smith Oliver "held court" at the Calypso after hours.
Beauford produced at least three portraits of Baldwin during this period.
(1944) Pastel on paper
Knoxville Museum of Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
(1945) Oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
(1945) Pastel on paper
Photo credit: Ben Conant
Courtesy of Macdowell
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
In Amazing Grace, Leeming describes Beauford's fondness for the Calypso due to the multiple races of people with various sexual proclivities who made up its clientele. He provides a "laundry list" of intellectuals and celebrities who frequented the place, including C. L. R. James, Claude McKay, Alain Locke, Malcolm X, and Henry Miller. Even Beauford's brother, Joseph, was an occasional customer, though the two did not socialize when they were both present.
Leeming also describes costume parties that Williams organized and that Beauford loved to attend. He says that Beauford often played the guitar and sang at these events.
In Baldwin: A Love Story, Nicholas Boggs states that Beauford and Williams threw Baldwin a goodbye party at the Calypso before he left for France in November 1948.
