McSorely's celebrates 150th year [NYC's oldest pub]

The Journal News ^ | 2/17/04 | Michael Gannon

[Incorrigible]

McSorely's celebrates 150th year

By MICHAEL GANNON
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: February 17, 2004)

NEW YORK — Amid the smell of stale beer and ancient smoke, a few feet from the pot-bellied stove warming the early afternoon customers in the middle of the room, Joe McKiernan stood yesterday over his twin mugs of light ale resting on the bar at McSorley's Old Ale House.

"I'm probably one of their older customers," McKiernan, a 57-year-old security guard from the Bronx, said as he contemplated ordering the bar's turkey sandwich he has come to enjoy during 40 years of patronage.

Pausing for a moment, however, he reconsidered what he had just said. "I mean, living customers."

True, McSorley's — which today celebrates its 150th birthday — has outlived its original patrons, but neither their ilk nor much else has changed since the venerable East Village bar first opened its doors in 1854.

The bar's original tap still pours only two beers, McSorley's light or dark, ordered two at a time by patrons who each day pack the bar's sawdust-covered floors. Old pictures, yellowed newspaper clippings and other relics line the walls, contributing to the place's musty ambience.

Surly waiters in gray smocks brusquely elbow their way through the crowds, carrying 10 mugs in each hand, clinking the empties up from tables and returning with foamy-headed replacements from the bar.

But if McSorley's patrons wanted brightly colored cocktails with clever names served by sterile-looking staff, they wouldn't be here.

"In New York, every place has an attitude, an edge," said Tom Gillespie, a 41-year-old financial professional from Brooklyn, as he downed two lights and two darks while reading the sports page at the bar. "This place doesn't. It's not trendy. It is what it is."

That's the way Matty Maher, McSorley's sixth proprietor, sees fit to keep it. He took his first job as a dishwasher in the bar after emigrating from Ireland in 1964, eventually serving as a bartender until he bought the place in 1977.

"When you come in here, you have a bartender serving you," Maher said, in his jovial, County Kilkenny brogue. "When you go to a lot of other bars, you have an attractive young lady. You don't see the big, burly Irishman behind the bar anymore."

Not that every McSorley's bartender is a big, burly Irishman. Several years ago, Maher's daughter, Teresa, became the first female barkeep in McSorley's — which did not even allow women to set foot inside until 1970. Teresa is the heir apparent to the place, likely ensuring it will stay under the control of only the third family since its founding.

Old John McSorely, the bar's founder who ran the place until his death at age 87 in 1910, remains a presence in the place. The motto he coined adorns a plaque that hangs above the bar: "Be good, or be gone."

Aside from the occasional college student who becomes a little too loud in the back room, most of McSorley's patrons pay heed, said Richie Buggy, a white-haired waiter who has tended to the bar's thirsty masses since 1962.

"There's no TV, there's no distractions," he said between trips from the bar to the communal tables that line the walls of the bar's two rooms. "At the tables, you're forced to sit with people you don't know, so you all have to like each other."

And largely, they all do get along, from those bellied up to the bar buying a round for neighbors they just met, to old friends who make it a point to rendezvous at the bar when they are in town for a visit.

Matt McDonough, a 52-year-old real estate developer from Massachusetts, stood at the south end of the bar next to his high school friend, 52-year-old John Chambers of the Bronx, as sunlight filtered through the window facing East Seventh Street.

McDonough said he was driving to New York for business when he heard about today's anniversary celebration and called Chambers, a bartender at Old Town Bar, another old New York haunt near Union Square, to visit the place before the crowds got too big.

"It's the feel of the place," McDonough said. "The people are nice. There's good, simple food, cheap. You always meet nice people in here."

This, to Maher, is what it is all about. McSorley's has drawn customers for 150 years because of its authenticity, its disarming charm.

There is nothing about that that needs changing, he said.

"That's what's survived of old New York, above everything else," Maher said. "A pub is a pub."

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The pub's timeline

• 1854 – John McSorley opens a pub in a five-story brick tenement building on East Seventh Street in the East Village. It is named The Old House at Home, after a pub in his native County Tyrone, Ireland.

• 1910 – McSorley dies at age 87, leaving the bar to his son, Bill.

• 1920 – Prohibition begins, closing many drinking establishments. McSorley's is one of the few bars allowed to remain open through a grandfather clause, serving less than 3.5 percent alcoholic "near beer."

• 1933 – Prohibition ends.

• 1936 – Bill McSorley sells the building and bar to a retired New York City policeman, Daniel O'Connell.

• 1940 – O'Connell dies, leaving the building and business to his daughter, Dorothy O'Connell Kirwan. She and her husband, Harry Kirwan, and later their son, Dan, manage the bar for the better part of the next four decades.

• 1970 – Pushed by New York's Public Accommodations Law, McSorley's opens its doors to women for the first time.

• 1977 – Matty Maher, a longtime bartender, buys the bar from Dan Kirwan.

• 2004 – McSorley's celebrates its 150th anniversary.

Sources: Lexis-Nexis research

Not for commercial use.  For educational and discussion purposes only.

[Incorrigible]

I love McSorely's.

I celebrated my 21st birthday at McSorely's in 1986 with a bunch of high school friends.  After tolerating our semi-rowdiness long enough, sure enough, Brendan, stopped serving us and kicked us out!

Though they may have allowed women to enter in 1970, there wasn't a separate women's bathroom until the 90's!

I don't get there much at all now.  I've only been there once since the smoking ban in NYC.  I'm not a smoker but alas, this is one place where you might wish for the smell of tobacco in the air!

 

Just a wee little place.

 

Yes, those are turkey wishbones that are attracting all the dust on the lamp above your head in the front room.

 

Pot belly stove in the back room.

No, that's not a photoshop image.  That's a bartender with 10 light and 10 dark!

[Incorrigible]

Dead, something tells me you've spent some time at McSorely's!

[ken5050]

I lived in the Village for 4 years.. (NYU 64-68) and McSorley's was a favorite..back then, it was also a real dump....it lacked the cachet it's aquired the last 20 years or so....back then..the demands for letting females in were just starting to begin....the nascent "feminnazis" used to stand outside the bar ocasionally, and "flash" at the patrons inside..the idea being to tshow them what they were "missing"..which means that McSorley's may well havwe been the real birthplace of the "titty bar"

[dennisw]

Had a few beers there in the early 1970s

[ml/nj]

neither their ilk nor much else has changed

What a croc!

Here's two: Cigars and women.

ML/NJ

[dead]

Hell yeah. It was a big bar hopping destination in my early twenties.

Even managed to get a few mugs past the closing time frisk. (If it's winter, a thick coat can hide them in the upper arm part of the sleeve!)

It was always too packed on the weekend nights, but it's a great place to tie one on if you have an afternoon to kill in the city.

[ken5050]

Twas a typo..not "ilk"..but should have been "milk"..they buy a quart every 20 years or so...

[familyofman]

A great pub! We took our youngest son there with some of his frat brothers to celebrate his 21st birthday. The beer is great and the ambiance is just as good.

The world would be a better place if every neighborhood had a pub like this.

[blackdog]

I first went to McSorley's in 1988 at the coaxing of a coworker. I loved it. We worked in Stamford and it was an hour's commute, but I really enjoyed the pub atmosphere and the civility of patrons and the unpretenciousness of the staff. That slimy fake demeanor at chain bars, restaraunts, sports bars, and the like is downright annoying.

Thanks for the post. I have a cold case of McSorley's Ale (now sold retail in bottles) out in my garage. Well it's close to a full case.......

[u-89]

Did you carve your initials in the table?

[dighton]

John Sloan, McSorley's Bar (1912).

[Hoboken]

I didn't carve my name in the table but was the bartender almost bit my head of for plucking a piece of dust off a lamp. "Do I come to your house and start cleanin up?" were his words.

[ken5050]

On Thursday nights, after our weekly fraternity chapter meetings...we'd all pile into cras..tear over the Brooklyn Brigde, and go down to Nathan's on Coney Island for dogs and fries..then, having heeded the twin maxims of "eat before drinking", and "don't drink and drive"..we'd head back to the Village..park the cars...and head to McSorley's, from which we could walk home....most of my fraternity brothers had no classes of Friday..me, poor slop, I had 8 am labs on Friday...inorganioc, then organic chem..oten wondered how I managed to avoid blowing up the place....

[Remole]

I was there a few times in the late 80's. My first time, I had what my friend called the traditional initiation: cheese and onions on a cracker, with the hottest mustard in the world. I can still feel it in my sinuses. Great beer, great setting, great place. Too bad here in Ohio I can't get McSorley's in a bottle.

[Hoboken]

My previous post should read:

I didn't carve my name in the table but the bartender almost bit my head off for plucking a piece of dust off a lamp. "Do I come to your house and start cleanin up?" were his words.

Hobo

[par4]

I was ther the night before they were forced by the city to allow women to be served. Great party. After that, it seemed to go downhill a little. They even had to station a man at the door to the bathroom so that things didn't back up when a woman was using the facilities.

I think that one of the reasons that it was a fun place before women were allowed in was that there was none of that "singles bar" action going on, just a bunch of men enjoying a couple of beers and a platter of crackers, cheese and onions. No need to dress or act differently for the ladies.

[nicollo]

McSorely's!!! I was so tempted to take my kids there on a visit to the City this summer. See, that's where your Dad... Dropped that idea. 1980s haunt for Nicollo. We'd get unsuspecting ladies to meet us there, then wait for them to have to take a leak. Classic NYC mens room, btw.

That's right: ten mugs in each hand. Slap 'em on the table. Man, I can smell the place now.

[Incorrigible]

Even managed to get a few mugs past the closing time frisk.

That took some talent indeed!

[Incorrigible]

Did you carve your initials in the table?

Alas, I did not.  I didn't have the tools when I had the inclination and didn't have the inclination when I had the tools!

(Though my initials are/were inscribed in the wall at the "old" Gino's East Pizza in downtown Chicago using whiteout of course!)

[Lurking Libertarian]

cheese and onions on a cracker, with the hottest mustard in the world. I can still feel it in my sinuses.

I remember that mustard well. Coleman's English mustard powder mixed with flat beer.