(This venue is closed.) This name of this self-described "modern American" restaurant has a Cuban heritage. Victor del Corral, who was born in Guanabacoa, east of Havana, in 1922 and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1957, opened Victor's Cafe on the Upper West Side of Manhattan 1963. In 1971 he commissioned the Cuban-born artist Arturo Martín Garcia to create an artwork that would commemorate del Corral's rural upbringing.
Against a field of sugarcane, Martín Garcia sculpted a bas-relief that wraps around the side-street entrance to the restaurant. The south face of the bas-relief depicts a yoked team of oxen pulling a cartful of cut sugarcane; the east face depicts a guajiro, or agricultural worker.
In 1980, Victor del Corral transplanted his namesake restaurant to West 52nd St., where it continues to this day, but the bas-relief, which Martín Garcia had sculpted from plaster mixed with marble dust, was too fragile to be moved. Rooted to this Columbus Ave. corner, the bas-relief was at some point after its installation colored in earthtones; these had deteriorated considerably at the time of preservation hearings in 2012. Ultimately the bas-relief was restored to the original whitewashed coloration shown here.
Oxbow Tavern
240 Columbus Ave. (at West 71st St.), Manhattan
646-490-4075
www.OxbowTavern.com
