This entry is a bit of a departure; while usually I’m plumbing pretty deeply into the past and drawing up places long gone patronized by persons long dead, this time I’m dropping my line into the shallower end of history’s fishpond.

Come with me back to a cozy and familiar café in the heart of Rochester’s Neighborhood of the Arts, on the corner of University and Atlantic. In a cute and acutely-angled ground floor storefront of the venerable old Culver Block flatiron building, coffee was being served in something akin to a community living room; the intimate space was replete with artwork, old books, and the reupholstered curb-picked chairs that were the mark of a proper 90’s-era coffee shop.

This was Moonbeans, glowing with nostalgic glory in my memory.

My first experience of Moonbeans was in 1999; I was attending a creative writing course called “Art Eats Poetry” at Writers & Books. The instructor of the course, poet Todd Beers, was fond of Moonbeans: he would take us there during breaks. I found myself for the first time in my young life in the classic local coffeeshop environment, taking in the artwork and décor, playing a pleasant game of chess against my instructor. Little did I know this would begin my lifelong love of coffeeshops.

Also, little did I know that a car was going to slam into the playground at the corner of University and Merriman while we were enjoying our drinks; normally, my class would have been lounging about the play equipment and chatting. That day had–thankfully–been different; but that’s neither here nor there.

We’re talking about Moonbeans.

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Moonbeans

Originally, the cozy corner cafe was opened as a makeup and photography design studio by Christine Ventura Goff, now Christine Ventura Goff Knoblauch. Finding much in the way of downtime in this business, Christine decided to branch out.

As someone who loves to make an inviting space, and a welcoming place for the community, Christine Knoblauch chose to use the sunny corner lot as a cafe.

I visited Christine Knoblauch recently in the studio and home she shares with her husband, Paul Knoblauch, to reminisce about Moonbeans. There, she revealed some irony behind her choice of business: “I don’t drink coffee.” You could have knocked me over with a feather! She explained that she “learned to tell apart the different kinds of coffee by smell.”

Honestly, not a bad method of coffee selection; they often smell nicer than they taste, and I say this as a coffee lover. Moonbeans, of course, offered a wide array of other beverage selections, from tea to cocoa to wine, for those who don’t prefer the black brew.

Come 1997, Moonbeans expanded into a larger adjacent space, making a new seating area.

Moonbeans owner Christine Goff never expected to go into the coffee business. She worked as a photo stylist and makeup artist in New York City before returning to her roots in Rochester.

Initially, Goff rented what is now her coffee shop in the Flatiron Building on University Avenue for a makeup studio. Business in the cosmetics field was slow, so she devised an alternate business plan.

“I always wanted to open a little coffee shop–a neighborhood place where people can relax and feel comfortable,” Goff says. That is how Moonbeans was born in 1994.

Three years later, Goff has expanded her coffee shop to make room for its growing clientele. Moonbeans more than doubled its seating area by expanding into the room next door, and just recently remodeled its basement to serve as a wine bar and dance floor.

Goff’s sense of style is reflected in her eclectic shop. From antiques to lighted spheres, Moonbeans is a feast for the eyes. Customers can marvel at the photography and artwork displayed on the walls while sipping a cappuccino.

“I love collecting furniture and junk,” she says. “Everything in here has a story.”
Many of the offbeat furniture were thrift-shop buys and salvages. Goff re-upholstered the furniture on her own to make it look like new. “I had to get creative because I funded everything myself,” she says.

Goff did not have any financial backers for the business. Having to watch her budget, Goff found artistic inspirations in the most unusual places. Part of her wallpaper comes from an old songbook she salvaged. “I just tore the pages off–it was free,” she says.

Her new basement ceiling is covered with mesh wiring from the Home Depot Inc., and old speakers are refurbished for use as coffee tables.

With so much to gaze at, customers may forget Moonbeans’ offerings of coffee, pastries and wines. Canaltown Coffee Roasters Inc. coffee is served at Moonbeans along with pastries from bakeries throughout Rochester. Her wine list is regularly updated with wines from different regions. In the new year, Goff plans to expand her menu to feature panini sandwiches.

Goff would not disclose her sales figures but says her business has tripled since she opened in 1994. While she still works as a photo stylist to make ends meet, Goff hopes her latest additions to Moonbeans will rev up business and allow her to devote herself full time to the coffee shop.

Goff believes Moonbeans is unlike any restaurant or coffee shop in Rochester. It has what she described as a big-city feel with a sense of intimacy.

Her clientele is as varied as her eccentric decoration style.

“During the day, a lot of writers and students come in, and at night it turns into a date place,” she says. “I knew I was doing something right when one night I saw a middle-aged woman in a Chanel suit sitting next to a college student with spiky hair and wearing a dog collar–it’s a little bit of everything.”

https://rbj.net/1997/12/12/moonbeans/

There weren’t any exterior photos of Moonbeans during this time that I could find, but while touring Knoblauch’s studio we came upon this drawing on the wall:

Though there’s no specific identification of the artist beyond “Mark”, I asked artist Patrick Doyle–creator of the metal sphere around the tree pictured above–whether he had any idea. He told me it was Mark Bierworth, which I have unfortunately been unable to confirm or deny. If you know for a fact, please contact me.

The illustration is noteworthy for showing the corner as it appeared in 1999; the metal sphere by Patrick Doyle installed around the tree out front; the gauzy curtains to either side of the front door; the pergola set up on the corner.

That sphere is apparently still around, decorating the grounds of Knoblauch’s lake cottage.

Patrick Doyle’s work made up a large part of the aesthetic of Moonbeans; the sphere around the tree served as an introduction, as well as a couple more spheres inside, one being made entirely of pencils.

Amusingly, Moonbean’s Tripod-hosted webpage is still operational, last updated in 2001, giving us a nostalgic slice of the Internet as it appeared nearly a quarter century ago.

The page features four fuzzy photos which were, for a while, my only visual reminder of what Moonbeans actually looked like outside of my rosy memory.

Thankfully, Christine Knoblauch came through with a lovely set of images that showed clearer angles of the classic café. You can click these for larger versions:

One can see a couple of Patrick Doyle pieces in the above photos; the large sphere of pencils, and possibly the polygon in the last two photos.

Moonbeans would close officially in July of 2002. In its place, another cafe opened, Starry Nites.

Though Knoblauch moved on from the café to pursue sculpture, she credits her time at Moonbeans with cultivating some of the longest-lasting and most valuable relationships in her life–most importantly, meeting her husband Paul Knoblauch. Christine related to me how she was simply looking for a signature piece of furniture for the café when she contacted Paul Knoblauch, whose whimsical metal benches and seats she’d admired. “I thought, he was just the nicest man,” she explained. Eventually, they were married.

I asked if she had ever gotten that signature piece of furniture, and she simply laughed; “No, I didn’t.” Well, seemingly she got something better.

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Starry Nites

Starry Nites was a neighborhood mainstay for around seventeen years. Decorated with murals of Van Gogh-inspired villages with heavenly bodies above, the café leaned into the spirit of the Neighborhood of the Arts.

Though obviously quite aesthetically pleasing, there was a lack of the thrifted, yard sale jumble that made for a classic coffeeshop in my heart. Unified tables and chairs and few “nests” made the feel much different.

Despite this, it was a welcome and comfortable place to visit in the neighborhood. I have many happy memories of friendly visits with friends, of dates, of live music–such as seeing the talented Loveful Heights one purple April night:

Starry Nites would close its doors in 2020; a cafe called Matilda would briefly open in the space, before becoming Melo Coffee and Kitchen, the present café in the storefront.

https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/lifestyle/rocflavors/2020/10/21/matilda-coffee-shop-restaurant-opens-nota-rochester-ny/5981144002

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What Came Before

That survey brings us to the present day. But what was in the space before Moonbeans? You had to know I would get into it.

The wedge-shaped brick building at Atlantic and University was first constructed in 1885-1886 on the orders of Marvin A. Culver.

Shortly afterward, in 1888, the corner storefront that would one day become Moonbeans was occupied by Charles A. Dake of the Dake Bros. Druggists as a pharmacy.

The building was expanded eastward by William H. Gorsline in 1892:

That same year, Mr. Gorsline would also accidentally drink a spoonful of chloride disinfectant. It was an eventful year.

From around 1897-1922, the corner pharmacy was owned by William Albert Burkard. Wm. A. Burkard was a son of John M. Burkhard who was a partial cause of Burkhard Place temporarily splitting into Draude Place and Burkhard Place, as told in my first Gonechester post The Burkhard Place Schism.

[Yes, I know I used two different spellings of Burkard/Burkhard. I’d already committed to the H for John M. Burkhard in the linked entry, and it’s difficult to figure out what spelling these men actually used from extant sources.]

The ad provides a very small, low-detail image of the corner pharmacy:

William A. Burkard handed off the drug store to Frank N. DeCamp in 1922.

DeCamp went into bankruptcy ten years later, in 1932.

The pharmacy would become Lake Pharmacy:

In 1935, Cohen Beverage Stores Inc., a liquor store, moved into No. 698 University Avenue. The following year, they would move into No. 696, leaving No. 698 vacant.

In 1975, Cohen Beverage Stores was closed and the stocks auctioned off.

Some uncertain amount of time afterwards, No. 696 University became “Squeaky’s Market”, which it was in 1982 during a genteel hold-up:

It is around this time, 1981, that the building was being threatened with demolition. Its savior came in the form of Paul Kramer, who purchased the flatiron building and began renovating it piecemeal. Kramer would take out a loan, fix up a segment of the building, rent it out, and then pay down the loan before taking out the next one, repeating the process until the entire building was in shape for rental purposes.

In 1986, No. 696 University was home to a florist, Fleur-de-Lis, owned by Mary Karen Read.

That leads us almost right back up to when the corner shop was bought up by Christine Knoblauch, closing the circle. So much has taken place in this acute city street corner, and I’ve taken part in some of it.

I’d like to thank Christine Knoblauch once again for providing so many photos and anecdotes for inclusion in this post, and for inviting me to her lovely home studio. I’d like to thank artist Patrick Doyle for answering one of the several questions I sent him; that’s actually way better than I usually get! I didn’t hear back from anyone else I bothered, but thank them for their parts in the story regardless.

Because, in the end, that’s all history really is. People doing stuff, at a certain time. Whether they’re here now to talk about it, or left in the black-and-white type of the newspaper archives, events were written by what they did in their time, even if that’s simply serving coffee–or drinking it.

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