McSorley's Old Ale House

It’s rare to find any place that truly feels like a portal to another time period, let alone in New York City, where years of continuous change have erased entire eras from the architectural record. McSorley’s Old Ale House would be an anachronism in any setting, but it is particularly enchanting to find a place that hasn’t removed its decorations since 1910 along East 7^th Street. McSorley’s is the oldest continuously operated bar in New York City, and also claims to be the oldest Irish Pub.

The date which it was opened is somewhat murky due to conflicting city and immigration records, although the bar itself records the year as 1854. Its founder, John McSorley, left Ireland to escape the Potato Blight, and called the bar “The Old House At Home”. In 1864 the property was expanded into a five-story tenement, with McSorley living in the second floor above the bar, where he passed away in 1910. Aside from a brief period in 1905 where the bar experimented with serving hard liquor, McSorley’s has remained an ale house. In 1908 the name was changed to McSorley’s Old Time Ale House, but the word “Time” did not withstand the test of itself and the bar has remained named McSorley’s Old Ale House since it was removed.

Over the years an impressive roster of famous visitors to McSorley’s has included Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Boss Tweed, Harry Houdini (whose handcuffs are still attached to the bar), John Lennon, Woody Guthrie, Hunter S. Thompson, and many others. E. E. Cummings wrote a poem in 1923 entitled “I was sitting in mcsorley’s” which certainly gives the impression that the writer is becoming steadily more drunk as the lines progress, and in the early 1940s New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell wrote an article about the bar that later was featured in his book “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon”, which only increased the bar’s fame and popularity.

One of the less appealing aspects of McSorley’s past is the great lengths owners went to in order to prevent women from patronizing the bar. Their motto was “Good Ale, Raw Onions, and No Ladies”, and even after many bars opened their doors to women after the Prohibition in the 1930s, McSorley’s refused to admit women until they were forced to by a discrimination case filed by the National Organization for Women in 1970. It was only in 1986 that they added a women’s restroom. This aspect of the bar was over 50 years ago, the owners have changed, and thankfully little trace of it remains.

Today, patrons of all kinds enjoy McSorley’s. The menu is simple but surprisingly cheap, as are the beers, which come in two varieties: light or dark. The wooden walls are lined with yellowed historical photos, paintings, and articles, and when it’s not crowded it’s tempting to spend an hour or two just perusing the various artifacts from the bar’s past. A particularly poignant example are the wishbones hung over the bar by doughboys leaving for World War I. Since they were to be removed upon their return, one presumes they never survived.

Visiting a place frequented by so many legendary historical figures with such a well-preserved interior is an experience enough on its own, but perhaps one of the most charming aspects of McSorley’s is how unpretentious it is. In a city with more than its share of overpriced, trendy restaurants and bars, McSorley’s still feels like the charming neighborhood dive bar it started out as over 150 years ago. Rather than pretentiously trumpeting its value, it allows customers to enjoy it at their own pace while downing a few beers. It’s definitely not a spot to miss if you’re planning a visit to New York City and would like a sense of how bars operated decades ago, albeit no longer with the gender discrimination of the past.