McSorley’s Old Ale House, located in Manhattan’s East Village, is one of New York City's oldest and most storied bars. I made a trip there a few winters back to photograph this legendary place and to throw back a few pints with the locals.
It was established in 1854, and for most of its history, it has operated with a strict motto: “Good Ale, Raw Onions, and No Ladies.” In fact, women weren’t officially allowed in until 1970, following a court order.
With its sawdust-covered floors, antique memorabilia, and walls lined with faded newspaper clippings and photos, McSorley’s has long been a haven for artists, writers, and radicals.
Among its most famous patrons were e.e. cummings, who immortalized the bar with these opening lines to his famous 1923 poem “i was sitting in McSorley’s”—
i was sitting in mcsorley's.
outside it was New York and beautifully snowing.
Inside snug and evil.
John Sloan, a prominent figure in the Ashcan School of art, was captivated by the atmosphere of the old bar. Between 1912 and 1930, he created five notable paintings depicting scenes from the saloon: "McSorley's Bar," "McSorley's Back Room," "McSorley's at Home," "McSorley's Cats," and "McSorley's Saturday Night."
Other literary figures like Joseph Mitchell, the legendary New Yorker writer, helped secure its mythic status with his 1940 profile, McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.
"To a steady McSorley customer, most other New York saloons seem feminine and fit only for college boys and women... In McSorley's, the customers are self-sufficient; they never try to impress each other."
Woody Guthrie and Dylan Thomas were also frequent guests at this fine establishment. According to one article, Guthrie visited McSorley’s in 1943, “when LIFE magazine photographed him strumming his guitar for a group of workingmen huddled over mugs of ale in the front room.”
Dylan Thomas never wrote about this particular bar, but he “drank there often enough to get eighty-sixed once upon a time.”
Other notable figures who frequented this rickety Irish joint include Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and literary figures like Hunter S. Thompson, Brendan Behan, Paul Blackburn, LeRoi Jones, Gilbert Sorrentino, Dustin Hoffman, and George Jean Nathan.
Over the years, McSorley’s has remained a stubborn outpost of old New York—offering just two drinks (light and dark ale), no music, and a palpable sense that time stands still within its walls.
Anyway, I’d like to end with a poem by Reuel Denney that I think beautifully captures the legendary, old-time essence of the place. I hope you enjoy it.
McSorley's Bar
Mac had a place to drink and talk downtown Where only men were welcome, or grown boys. When the grey snow blew there was the forum stove Where arguments were slow, and out of noise. The dust was old as Sumter, and the talking Had never stopped since Dixie went to war, And all the men from Grant to Hayes to now Had lived beside, been buried from that bar. There, in the evening, the city carpenter Bumped up a drink with one of the Croker's men And politics and poetry were one From supper time until it closed at ten. The grey-haired men considered from their chairs How time is emptied like a single ale.
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