Located on 11th Avenue and West 46th street, Patrick Henry Carley opened the Landmark Tavern, an Irish waterfront saloon in Hell’s Kitchen in 1868.
New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen got its name from its notoriously violent and poverty stricken past in the late eighteen hundreds.
Carley and his wife originally designed the bar to serve as a home for their children on the upper floors, but during Prohibition, they were forced to turn the third floor into a speakeasy.
In the mid 1960’s to the late 1980’s, the saloon became a regular hangout for the Westies, an Irish American organized crime gang responsible for racketeering, burglary, drug trafficking contract killings.extortion and counterfeiting.
Said to be haunted by three ghosts: famous gangster actor George Raft, who was a regular and lived nearby, an Irish immigrant girl who died of cholera in her upstairs room and a confederate war veteran, who was severely stabbed in a bar brawl and crept up to the tavern’s second floor to die in a bathtub.
The Landmark’s rich history has seen the dock workers and seamen come and go over time, but the neighborhood still embraces it.
In 2005 a careful restoration added some spit and polish to its charming original details like the mahogany paneling, tiled floors, tin ceiling and bar carved from a single tree.
Today a list of nearly twenty fine single malt scotches and a menu from a pedigreed Australian chef are classy touches for this old saloon.
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