| Butter-Cake Dick's | |
| Pushpin Map: | Manhattan |
| Current-Owner: | Richard Marshall |
| Street-Address: | Spruce Street |
| City: | Manhattan, NYC |
| State: | New York |
| Zip: | --> |
| Country: | USA |
| Coordinates: | 40.7114°N -74.0053°W |
| Other-Label: | --> |
Butter-Cake Dick's was a Manhattan café in the cellar of the New-York Daily Tribune building in Spruce Street. It was named after the proprietor, Richard Marshall, who had been a newsman but now sold butter-cakes, also known as sinkers, which were a type of rich biscuit containing a knob of butter. It was open all night and did good business with newsboys and politicians from the nearby Tammany Hall who would treat journalists to a butter-cake as a form of patronage or bribe. In the 1850s, the price of a butter-cake with a cup of coffee was three cents.