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He bought a fire-alarm gong similar to those used in schools and factories and screwed it to the seven-foot-tall icebox behind the bar. If someone started a song, or if the old men sitting around the stove began to yell at each other, he would shuffle over to the gong and give the rope a series of savage jerks. The gong is there yet and is customarily sounded at a quarter to midnight as a warning that closing time is imminent; the customers grab their ears when it goes off. Bill was consistent in his aversion to noise; he didn’t even like the sound of his own voice.
New York’s oldest Irish bar: Inside McSorley’s Old Ale House
The same photographs hang on the walls, the same appliances sit in their original position, and the everchanging community continues to live the same experience as many before them. Right in the heart of it all, McSorley’s stands unchanged by the Sport’s bars, restaurants, theater, and busy modernized environment surrounding it. McSorley’s is the epitome of New York City and American history, as it stands as a symbol of what 1850s New York City was like at that time. John McSorley was a city-famous, hard-drinking man whose pub was already a huge success at the time. Women were not allowed, the men were supposed to concentrate on the essentials, namely drinking.
Wishbones hanging from a light fixture are also among the bar's best-known mementos.
(His daughter, Teresa Maher de la Haba is the current owner.) He felt that he could not entrust the task to anybody else. One by one, he took down each wishbone, dusted it, and carefully returned it to its rightful place on the lamp rail. Doyle earned a "Best of Philly" award in 2010 when he was named the city's best bartender, and his wife, Laura Doyle, said all these years later she doesn't mind sharing him with the rest of the city.
McSorley's Old Ale House
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As well, you may have the good fortune to spot Babe Ruth’s farewell photo from Yankee stadium, which was a donation from the photographer who was a regular himself. America’s oldest, continuously operated bar is packed full of vast history throughout the various areas of the bar. McSorley’s is not a big bar and there are no bad seats, providing you can get one as it is always busy. From the ceiling to the sawdust covered floor, you will find photographs, antiques, and hundreds of years of history. From wall to wall history surrounds patrons as they enjoy their choice of light or dark ale.
History on the walls – memorabilia at McSorley’s
It rode the fervor of Abraham Lincoln’s historic Cooper Union Address delivered in New York City. They served the 16th president their signature brew, only to later lament the fateful news of his assassination in April of 1865. Strangely, Lincoln shares this similarity to JFK, who was also rumored to have tasted McSorley’s toasted lager.
Houdini’s handcuffs
To a steady McSorley customer, most other New York saloons seem feminine and fit only for college boys and women; the atmosphere in them is so tense and disquieting that he has to drink himself into a coma in order to stand it. In McSorley’s, the customers are self-sufficient; they never try to impress each other. In other saloons if a man tells a story, good or bad, the man next to him laughs perfunctorily and immediately tries to tell a better one. For one thing, it is dark and gloomy, and repose comes easy in a gloomy place.
McSorley’s Old Ale House
If you’re a close friend of one of the seven, you can request that their vessel be brought out so you can continue to drink together. The glint of the well-worn taps behind the bar, which all feature Old John McSorley’s head, helps distract the casual observer from discovering the pub’s final secret. Nestled amongst a formidable collection of bric-a-brac lie three small vessels. Each contains the earthly remains of a McSorley’s regular whose final wish was to be laid to rest amongst the sawdust and tchotchkes. It stated that the subjected establishments had to provide “sanitary facilities” for their employees … but not necessarily for their customers.
History
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The only time McSorley’s altered its serving practices was during Prohibition in the United States. During this period, the bar served a ‘near beer’, with too low an alcohol content to be outlawed. This little pub is really unique in the East Village New York.
craft beer, pub fare.
Bill McSorley was the kind of person who minds his own business vigorously. He inherited every bit of his father’s surliness and not much of his affability. The father was by no means a lush, but the son carried temperance to an extreme; he drank nothing but tap water and tea, and bragged about it. He was so solemn that before he was thirty several customers had settled into the habit of calling him Old Bill. He worshipped his father, but no one was aware of the profundity of his worship until Old John died.
He unlocked the saloon at seven, swept it out himself, and spread sawdust on the floor. Until he became too feeble to manage a racing sulky, he always kept a horse and a nanny goat in a stable around the corner on St. Mark’s Place. He kept both animals in the same stall, believing, like many horse-lovers, that horses should have company at night. During the lull in the afternoon a stable-hand would lead the horse around to a hitching block in front of the saloon, and Old John, wearing his bar apron, would stand on the curb and groom the animal.
While playing stickball, they keep great packing-box fires going in the gutter; sometimes they roast mickies in the gutter fires. Drunks reel over from the Bowery and go to sleep in doorways, and the kids give them hotfoots with kitchen matches. In McSorley’s the free-lunch platters are kept at the end of the bar nearer the street door, and several times every afternoon kids sidle in, snatch handfuls of cheese and slices of onion, and dash out, slamming the door. Although by no means a handshaker, Old John knew many prominent men. One of his closest friends was Peter Cooper, president of the North American Telegraph Company and founder of Cooper Union, which is a half-block west of the saloon. Mr. Cooper, in his declining years, spent so many afternoons in the back room philosophizing with the workingmen that he was given a chair of his own; it was equipped with an inflated rubber cushion.
He learned later that a customer who had fought in the Civil War had brought them back from a Confederate prison in Andersonville, Georgia, and had given them to Old John as a souvenir. Bill would sometimes take an inexplicable liking to a customer. Around 1911 a number of painters began hanging out in McSorley’s.
McSorley’s Old Ale House reveals a lot about New York history as its walls capture many of the greatest moments in American history. As the walls are covered with newspaper articles, photographs, records, and more, a visit to McSorley’s is an educational experience. To this day, McSorley’s is the only New York City bar that still throws saw dust on the floor. It is another lasting tradition that McSorley’s has kept since its founding.
In 2011, New York City passed a law forbidding bars and restaurants from keeping cats. Minnie was forced out and, five years later, the Department of Health closed McSorley’s for four days while they resolved a rodent problem. McSorley’s has all the hallmarks of a classic tourist attraction, but Buggy says it’s the regulars who really make the place special. Eleven years in, Buggy still refers to himself as “the new guy.” One bartender has been working at McSorley’s for 47 years (and counting), and several customers have been coming in on a regular basis since the 1950s.
The tradition started back when many customers were chewing tobacco and spit would go flying everywhere. The sawdust was put on the floor to absorb the spit along with any beer spills. The sawdust made it easier to clean the ground as well as to provide a smooth surface on which boxes could be moved. According to the Business Insider, “During World War I, McSorley’s began a tradition of giving troops heading off to war a turkey dinner and, of course, pints of ale. The turkey wishbones were left as a good-luck charm, and those who returned would bring their wishbone back down. The bones left still hanging represent the troops who did not return.
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