Postcrypt Coffeehouse

Postcrypt Coffeehouse is an all-acoustic music venue in the basement of St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University in New York City, run completely by students. Founded in 1964, Postcrypt has hosted many up-and-coming folk musicians, including Jeff Buckley, Dar Williams, Shawn Colvin, and Ani DiFranco. Additionally, Suzanne Vega, a graduate of Barnard College, returns to Postcrypt each Spring to play one secret concert. The young folk singer Anthony da Costa performs there regularly, and Mary Lee Kortes, of the band Mary Lee's Corvette, has played there along with her husband, the guitarist and producer Eric Ambel. Postcrypt is one of the few free, all volunteer-run venues in New York. Its size is also notable: according to the fire code, it can legally only host 35 people at a time, giving the venue a very intimate feel, and making it possible to have music without any sort of amplification.HistoryThe venue was established in 1964 with the help of the campus chaplain, Reverend John Cannon. Cannon and student Dotty Sutherland cleaned and redecorated a small storage room in the basement of the chapel, transforming it into Postcrypt.Despite popular conceptions, the Postcrypt location was never a "crypt," but rather a storage closet in the basement of the chapel; it takes its name from the Søren Kierkegaard book, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. This was then shortened to C.U (the initials for Columbia University) Postcrypt to reflect the fact that th