The George M. Cohan Corner

A hyphenate long before the word was coined, Broadway’s George M. Cohan was a consummate showman, boasting a résumé that included credits as composer, playwright, actor, producer, and theater owner; among his many accomplishments was that of being the only person ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for a song, the rousing World War I anthem “Over There.”

By the mid-1930s, it became Cohan’s habit to take pretheater cocktails in the Oak Room, and his preferred table was the booth in its northwest corner, which afforded a fine view of all comings and goings. It soon became known as his headquarters, where he was courted by both friends and would-be friends, many of whom were looking for work. After his death in 1942, a number of memorials were proposed in his honor, including a statue to be erected somewhere in the city. The Lambs, a theatrical club, petitioned The Plaza to affix a bronze plaque above the Oak Room booth that he loved so much, and after approval by the Hilton organization, it was put in place on April 24, 1946. The dedication, captured here, shows Cohan’s pals, actors William Gaxton and Victor Moore, along with Raymond Peck, Shepherd of the Lambs, and Plaza owner Conrad Hilton. The plaque remains there to this day, and the Cohan Corner, as it is now known, is still considered the Oak Room’s best table.

The municipal statue of Cohan took a lot longer to arrive; it was finally erected in 1959 in Duffy Square on Broadway between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets—a site that, coincidentally, was one of the proposed locales for the Sherman Monument, which instead came to rest in Grand Army Plaza.

Here, Cohan’s portrait, taken in the late 1930s by photographer Carl Van Vechten.