Inside Ninth Ward's 10-year comeback on 2nd Avenue

Photos and interview by Stacie Joy 

The reopening of the Ninth Ward has become something of an East Village epic. 

When the New Orleans-inspired bar closed on Feb. 14, 2016, the expectation was that it would return after an 18-month renovation and an addition to the building at 180 Second Ave., between 11th Street and 12th Street.

Instead, construction delays, the pandemic, landlord issues and a change in building ownership turned the project into an almost 10-year journey. Co-owner Nic Ratner compares it to Odysseus finally making it home after years at sea. 

Ahead of the long-awaited soft opening this week, ahead of the official debut on Friday, we met with the owners, Ratner, Robert Morgan, and Lena Geskin, to talk about surviving the delays, watching the neighborhood evolve from the sidelines, and why they never gave up on coming back to Second Avenue. 

The interview was punctuated with lots of laughter, even when recounting the difficulties of the situation. (Geskin, the chef, had to excuse herself to see to some kitchen activities. Below: Geskin, Ratner and Morgan.)

It's been nearly 10 years since you closed with the expectation of reopening in about 18 months. Did you ever have a moment when you wondered if Ninth Ward would actually make it back? 

Ratner: Almost monthly. The analogy I’ve come up with is that — it seems appropriate that the movie "The Odyssey" is about to come out — I feel like Odysseus, that I'm finally coming back after 10 years at war. Often, I would just say, this is not going to happen. We're just constantly being told, six months, nine months, then two years of silence, three months. It just kept going… 

Morgan: And a combination of lots of different things. The New York City Buildings Department and crazy bureaucracy. And COVID. 

Ratner: The ineptitude of the landlord! It was just a confluence of annoyances. 

Morgan: There were many times that we were just waiting. And then even when things were actually happening and we were able to be in here working with the owner at the time, his architect, and his engineers, for what he wanted to do, which was build two floors on top of the building that was here, they had to go 20 feet down to underpin the building and to make it stable enough to put that much more weight on top.

But they gutted the whole thing! There were just steel beams inside here. And they repoured all the floors and everything had to be up to, at the time, a 2022 code or whatever the bureaucracy was, the hoops that they were jumping through. That was what really caused most of the delays.

And then, in the last year, the owner approached us and let us know he was going to sell the building — not yet completed — and that he had found a new owner, who took possession of the building on Jan. 1 of this year. 

Ratner: No, last year? Jan. 1, 2025. 

Morgan: That's how much of a blur this is. 

Ratner: Exactly. Time has gone completely liminal. It's what COVID did to time; this building has done so exponentially more. It was Jan. 1, 2025.

What were you told about the gut renovation of the building at 180 Second Ave.? 

Morgan: At the time, they were going to be full-floor rentals. The elevator opens up onto each floor. They’re beautiful, and they go from east to west. The sun rises in the east, and you can get sun all day long because there's western exposure over here. They are gorgeous. The new owner's plan is to go condo with it. So the whole rental idea has been removed from the table. 

Do you have a good relationship with the new owner? 

Ratner: Yes, yes. Much better than... Oh, it's a relationship now. 

Morgan: Yeah, with the last owner, obviously, things started out wonderfully. It was going to be... 

Ratner: He said 18 months! By September of 2017, we were going to be back in here. Right. And then that all went pear-shaped.

Morgan: So that relationship suffered because of it. But the relationship with the new owner has been fantastic thus far. 

Ratner: The new owner actually seems grounded in reality. The previous owner would tell you what he thought you wanted to hear. Which is a euphemistic way of saying lying. 

What has it been like watching the East Village change while you’ve been waiting to reopen? What are you most looking forward to about being back? 

Ratner: I've been on 12th Street between Second and Third since 1983. I used to wait tables at Bandito's. 

That's a long time!

Ratner: Oh, I've always said they’ll take me out of the East Village feet first. 

Morgan: We both lived nearby when we opened Ninth Ward. I'd walk over, pick Nic up, and we'd come here together.

And we had Shoolbred's before this. I guess that one closed shortly after this? 

Ratner: Not shortly after, it was still going for a while after we opened this. And we have Kingston Hall as well. That's been going on the whole time. 

So that has kept you busy? 

Ratner: That kept us busy as well. When they said they were going to close to renovate this space, he [Morgan] had just flown over to London to open up Ninth Ward in London, which still exists and just had its 10th anniversary. 

And we were opening it as a sister bar. Well, now, a decade later, we're opening up the sister bar to the one in London, which is here. 

Morgan: Yeah, it's funny how that works. Obviously, COVID was a big change in the neighborhood. Nowadays, COVID is like that timeline. It was like before and after. It's like before Christ and after. 

And obviously things had changed drastically in New York during that time, especially in this industry with people drinking from home, and now the trend seems to be that people are drinking less, or at least Gen Z is drinking less. 

Ratner: Or articles say. 

Morgan: Yeah, who knows, really? I tend to think that's true nationally, but in Manhattan, we certainly haven't seen it at Kingston Hall. And we're hoping that's the case here as well.

Ratner: The thing with our bars is that there are always two prerequisites: no TVs and fireplaces. That brings a very different crowd than the World Cup, the Knicks or any other sporting event. We take the hit on nights when there's a big game or even the Oscars.

So, a warm and cozy vibe?

Ratner: Yeah. Warm and cozy, and also just generally a little more grown-up.

Morgan: I think we've gotten a little wiser, or maybe more refined, while still keeping the casual nature of the East Village. It seems like every other bar is up for "best bar in the world" now. Every industry has its own awards, and it feels like the Village — East or West — is filled with places like that. We still like to maintain the casualness.

Ratner: It's like you're conscientious without being pretentious. One of the things we've always said is that we want to build bars that we want to drink in. And secondly, we want to build bars that a woman feels comfortable walking into by herself. If that happens, then we've achieved what we set out to do.

How did you stay motivated through the construction delays, the pandemic and everything else that stretched this into nearly a decade of... what was your phrase? "Embellishments on the truth?"

Ratner: [Laughs.] Embellishments on the truth. I don't know. For the last 10 years, I just stayed busy making movies.

Morgan: I pivoted and started a residential contracting company, knowing we'd eventually have to rebuild this place. After COVID, people were tired of staring at their old kitchens and bathrooms, so the work was there. It kept my skills sharp, and it gave me a whole crew. When it was finally time to rebuild the Ninth Ward, we were ready to go. I always joke that it was my Parris Island training for a decade.

Ratner: Because of COVID, Kingston Hall closed for a year and a half. It wasn't feasible to stay open, but we kept it underwater — we kept it breathing. I even set up my film-editing rig there because there was nowhere else to work. Bars weren't open, but we managed with the landlord and somehow kept it afloat. When things reopened, it was still a going concern. Somehow, London and Kingston Hall both survived COVID.

Will longtime regulars recognize the new Ninth Ward? What have you tried to preserve, and what will be different?

Morgan: How many bars is this now that we've opened? Five? I think with each one, you correct the mistakes you've made in the past...

Ratner: ...and you make new mistakes.

Morgan: Exactly. We've stayed true to the same aesthetic. To me, this is kind of a mash-up of Shoolbred's and the old Ninth Ward.

Ratner: The footprint is smaller.

Morgan: It's narrower because they put an elevator in the building where there never used to be one. We lost about five feet of width. For anyone who remembers Shoolbred's, that was a very narrow bar, so this feels like a combination of the two places.

Ratner: The original Ninth Ward looked much more like Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop in New Orleans. It was darker, and people would come in and say, "It looks like a pirate ship." This is a lighter, softer version of that. And yet, the other day, someone interviewing for a server job walked in and said, "It looks like a pirate ship." So... I guess we kept the pirate ship.

Morgan: We never intended that, but apparently we did. We actually got rid of all the nautical elements because we wanted to move away from that. For 10 years, though, we kept everything in a barn in Massachusetts.

Ratner: It wasn't a storage unit. It was a barn. Out in the elements. With critters.

Morgan: A friend was kind enough to let us use it. We figured we'd only need it for a year and a half, so we didn't think much about it.

Ratner: Right...

Morgan: Then, when we finally went to retrieve everything, a lot of it was covered in bat guano. Some pieces couldn't be saved, but we were able to salvage the doors, shutters, wainscoting and some of the artwork.

Ratner: We also had this whole cabinet of curiosities that used to run along this wall before the bathrooms.

So where did the bathrooms go? 

Morgan: Oh, you don't have bathrooms anymore. We're going for the real New Orleans experience with no bathrooms. 

Ratner: There's one up here. The ADA one is up here, and then there are two more downstairs. And the kitchen was upstairs too. It was all on one floor before. We did have the walk-in downstairs in the basement. 

Morgan: You had to, like, bend down to get in there. 

Ratner: Oh, no, the basement looked like a crime scene. It was just, it was terrible. It looked like something out of "The Silence of the Lambs."

Morgan: Now it's very grown up. I mean, they did spend 10 years building it, so I’d hope so. 

Ratner: There are doors and a floor and things like that. And lights. 

Morgan: And lights!

Ninth Ward begins its soft opening with happy hour on Tuesday and Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m., followed by regular service until midnight each night. The bar's grand opening is scheduled for Friday. Follow them on Instagram for updates.