Iconic Village Cigar Store is Shuttered

Up in Smoke: A Village resident walks by the now closed landmark Village Cigars after it closed suddenly on February 7th. Another victim of the pandemic, the building currently sits vacant after over 100 years selling tobacco products, lottery tickets, candy and other sundries. Orignally opening in the 1920s as Union Cigars, Andy Singh purchased the business in 1998 and ran it until February of this year. The owner of the property, Jon Posner, stated that he has put the building on the market for $5.5 million, and is looking for a tenant who will keep up the historic character of the space. Photo by Bob Cooley.

One of the West Village’s iconic small stores closed this February after over 100 years at the triangular corner site of Christopher Street and Seventh Avenue, hemmed in by the 1 train subway station’s exit stairs on both sides.

Andy Singh, an Indian immigrant, has been the proprietor of Village Cigars for 26 years and runs Andy’s Deli nearby, according to reporting in Curbed by Ella Quittner.

The store closed because the owner, who had lost his tobacco license, couldn’t settle on a lease price with the building owner. The shop has been selling cigars to residents and commuters since the early 20th century, when it was called Union Cigars. “It’s not every day a 100-year-old business known the world over closes in your neighborhood,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of Village Preservation. “It’s sad to think of that iconic intersection without Village Cigars. Their presence was an element of continuity in a city and a neighborhood that’s undergone a tremendous amount of ongoing change.”

In a 2021 article by Roger Paradiso in WestView News, he writes, “It is further proof of the damage that the pandemic has caused to the mom-and-pop shops in the West Village.”

While it’s not surprising to learn that the likely cause of the closure was a rent dispute, it’s also possible that competition from the proliferating illegal cannabis shops may have pulled customers away from traditional smoke shops. It is further proof of the damage that the pandemic has caused to the mom-and-pop shops in the West Village.