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The small cafe where a single mother living on welfare wrote the book that would literally change the landscape of literature is up for sale.
The cafe is now a Chinese restaurant, and the owner offered it first to JK Rowling (she turned it down). Here’s what he had to say about what he hopes will happen:
Mr Ng said: “I saw an article about a house where Bruce Lee lived in Hong Kong that was donated to the local council to turn into a museum. That sparked an idea to turn this place into a museum.
“We were thinking of selling to JK Rowling first because we think something should be done to mark the fact she wrote the book here.”
– source
What do you think? I am really hoping that somebody takes this place and turns it into a literary museum of some sort; I believe that it does deserve some kind of recognition, don’t you?
This site isn’t the cafe in which Rowling wrote her first novel – its a Chinese Restaurant. Is someone really going to buy it, demolish the Chinese Restaurant and restore the original cafe? Seems unlikely. The time to have executed this idea would have been when the original cafe was for sale. Now, its kinda too late.
is that the one on Nicolson Street in Edinburgh?
I live in Edinburgh and the place that more or less officially is not the place in which Harry Potter was written is the Elephant House on George Fourth Bridge. I believe she has written there as well but not as much as in the one on Nicolson street cause that one was actually run by people she knew so she felt she could sit there longer without having to buy something too often.
I have kept an eye out for the cafe in Nicolson Street but never foudn it, -must have been cause it was already a restraunt.
Well for the tourists and other writers the Elephant House is THE PLACE. The staff wears T-shirts that say “The Birthplace of Harry Potter” on the back. And there is a large Harry Potter poster in the window. I suppose that cafe is now kind of taking the role of the “Rowling Cafe” And to be honest it is propably way nicer, cause you have a view on Greyfriers Graveyard and the castle on the hill right in front of you. So if you sit there writing something and look up you can easily imagine JK seeing Hogwarts infront of her.