White Horse Tavern is infamously known as the bar where poet Dylan Thomas proceeded to drink himself to death. The story goes that Thomas declared to drink roughly 18 whiskeys, retired at the Chelsea Hotel and died a few days later. The tavern was founded in 1880, and its original patrons were docksmen, sailors and other workers in the marine industry (the West Village was originally a port neighborhood). It wasn’t until the Beatnik, hippie and counterculture movements of the ‘50s and ‘60s that the Village became known for its artist communities.