By Kate Pastor

Art D’Lugoff led a life surrounded by a veritable who’s who of modern music, literature and comedy, but to family, friends and neighbors he was simply Art.

The Riverdale resident — owner of the famed Village Gate nightclub in Manhattan — died Nov. 4 at 85.

A celebrity in his own right, he nurtured the careers of such diverse artists as Miles Davis, Joan Baez, John Coltrane, Frank McCourt, Nina Simone, Woody Allen and Bill Cosby.

They were just a few of the largerthan- life stars who performed at the club he ran for more than 30 years at Thompson and Bleecker streets. He finally gave up the West Village venue in 1994 after his landlord went bankrupt.

Mr. D’Lugoff grew up in the Brighton Beach and Midwood sections of Brooklyn. He enlisted in U.S. Air force, which sent him to China during World War II. When he returned, he briefly lived in California before attending New York University on the G.I. Bill.

To make ends meet, he took jobs as a cab driver, tree pruner and PR man for an electrical union. He bused tables in the “Borscht Belt” in the Catskills on weekends and worked as a newspaper copyboy and researcher for reporters, including I.F. Stone at the now-defunct Daily Compass.

In 1955 he got his first taste of big time show business, organizing a midnight show at Circle in the Square with Pete Seeger, the then-blacklisted folk singer, as the headliner.

The venue had a capacity of 300 people and when the midnight show attracted numbers in the thousands, “he knew that he was on to something,” said his brother, Burt D’Lugoff.

He promoted shows featuring such talent as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Duke Ellington before he found a venue of his own.

In 1957, with his brother as a partner, he signed a lease on the basement of what was then the Mills Hotel at 160 Bleecker St. and began planning a new club — the Village Gate. He and his brother worked around the clock refurbishing the place.

“It’s how I got my beard,” Mr. D’Lugoff told The Press during an interview in 2005.

In addition to musicians, he booked comedians and put on off-Broadway shows like One Mo’ Time, nominated for a Grammy in 1979.