#mcsorley's

McSorley's Old Ale House, East 7th St. between 2nd & 3rd Avenues, October 7, 1942.

McSorley’s Old Ale House

Dorothy O'Connell Kirwan, the owner of McSorley's Old Ale House, showed up early on February 17, 1954, for the saloon's 100th anniversary celebration. Since women were not allowed inside, bartender Frank McKenna handed her a mug of ale outside the door. (It was finally forced to admit women in 1970.) McSorley’s, at 15 East 7th St., remains New York’s oldest continuously operated saloon.

Woody Guthrie playing and singing at table for the patrons of McSorley's Bar,  July 1943. On his guitar there is a small sign that reads, "This Machine Kills Fascists."

McSorley’s occupies the ground floor of a red brick tenement at 15 [East] Seventh Street, just off Cooper Square, where the Bowery ends. ... It is equipped with electricity, but the bar is stubbornly illuminated with a pair of gas lamps, which flicker fitfully and throw shadows on the low, cobwebby ceiling each time someone opens the street door. There is no cash register. Coins are dropped in soup bowls—one for nickels, one for dimes, one for quarters, and one for halves—and bills are kept in a rosewood cashbox. It is a drowsy place; the bartenders never make a needless move, the customers nurse their mugs of ale, and the three clocks on the walls have not been in agreement for many years.

     —Joseph Mitchell in The New Yorker, Aug. 14, 1940

In 1945 the troops began returning home. Families of all sorts welcomed them back.