Posted on 02/17/2004 8:16:18 AM PST by 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."
Send e-mail to Michael Gannon
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
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