NOLITA — Cafe Grumpy, the Brooklyn-based coffee shop made famous by the HBO show "Girls," is opening a new location in Nolita.
The building at 177 Mott St. is also home to musician John Legend, the realtors who arranged the Grumpy deal said. Legend lives in one of the building's nine loft-style luxury condos with his wife, Chrissy Teigen.
Cafe Grumpy signed a 15-year lease for the 800-square-foot space at the corner of Mott and Broome streets, according to Eastern Consolidated realtor James Famularo.
The space has been vacant for years, along with a 4,500-square-foot lower level with 15-foot barrel-vaulted ceilings and skylights embedded in the sidewalk around the building.
The building's owner wanted a restaurant to move in, and tried for years to get the local community board's approval for a liquor license, but never succeeded in winning over Community Board 2's liquor licensing committee, Famularo said.
"After analyzing the space, we quickly determined that a restaurant wouldn’t be a viable option, so we reached out to different types of businesses and within a few weeks leased the two spaces to Café Grumpy and a consulting cooperative," Famularo said.
The consulting cooperative is a new tech company called Coffee Labs, an Eastern Consolidated representative said. It will be taking over the lower level.
The building is known as the Brewster Carriage House because it once housed "America's most luxurious carriage maker," Brewster & Co., Famularo said.
According to Famularo, Brewster sold a carriage to Abraham Lincoln on his way to his first inaugural address in Washington, D.C., and made custom rides for J.P. Morgan and New York City power families like the Vanderbilts and the Astors.
Cafe Grumpy owner Caroline Bell said they expect to open on Mott Street in May. They have two locations in Brooklyn — their flagship in Greenpoint and another in Park Slope — and four in Manhattan, on the Lower East Side, in Grand Central Terminal, in Chelsea and on West 39th Street.
