Picture it: Prohibition. In most places around the US, a dark 13-year span from 1920 to 1933, when the manufacture, transport, and sale of alcohol was strictly illegal. In New York City, however, the “Noble Experiment” was treated as more of a suggestion. An entire underground nightlife economy sprang up to sustain the sale and distribution of booze. Historians estimate that anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000 speakeasies operated at once, and one of those would become Pete’s Tavern.
That secret storefront sat on the corner of Irving Place and 18th Street. Before Prohibition, it was known as Healy’s, a favorite haunt of the notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall politicians, whose headquarters stood just a few blocks away. In 1922, the tavern changed hands and officially became Pete’s Tavern — though it would be years before the public knew it by that name.
To keep the bar running undetected, new proprietor Peter D’Belles disguised the place as a flower shop, with orchids, violets, and gardenias out front and signs that read things like “Say it with Flowers.” The windows of the barroom were blacked out, and he installed a side door as the “flower shop” entrance. Those in the know, would enter and give a password. That would grant them entrance through a dummy refrigerator that would lead into the saloon.
That ruse kept the tavern open through all of Prohibition. D’Belles likely knew he had some built-in protection, thanks to the Tammany Hall regulars who had no intention of giving up their drinking habits.
“The politicians were as crooked then as they are today,” said Gary Egan, co-owner of Pete’s Tavern, general manager for the past 39 years, and the restaurant’s unofficial historian. And with the political power brokers among the regulars, no inspector dared ask questions.
When Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933, the flower-shop signs came down, and Pete’s simply reopened.
Inside New York’s Oldest Continuously Running Bar
Walk inside and Egan will gleefully show off the hinges of the old fake refrigerator door, now just a vestige on an open doorframe between the bar and the dining room. One hinge is painted over, but the other still makes a satisfying “thunk” when you flip it.
The side-door entrance from the speakeasy days has since been sealed up with its locks painted over, but is still clearly recognizable as a door. Egan’s been thinking about spotlighting it somehow. This is New York City history, after all, and these kinds of vestiges are getting harder and harder to find.
Whether the flower shop actually sold flowers is anybody’s guess. But what it does reveal is that Pete’s Tavern, touted as the longest continuously running bar in New York, knows how to be resilient.
Deciphering what’s actually New York’s oldest bar is somewhat of a lost cause as records are spotty. But everyone agrees that Pete’s Tavern is somewhere in the conversation. The claim is that since 1864, a date squarely set in the Civil War, the space has continuously been a go-to for a boozy tipple.
In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was in the White House and New York City was bustling with industry. On 14th Street, the Academy of Music thrived as an opera house and a center of the city’s elite. Gramercy Park had already been drained from marshy swampland into a private, gated park. Between the two stood a building constructed in 1829 as the Portland Hotel, a stagecoach rooming house with stables, that in 1851 became home to a “grocery and grog,” or a neighborhood provisions shop with a social drinking component. By 1864, it was fully converted into a saloon-style tavern, a respite from the commotion outside, thick with cigar smoke, complete with swinging doors.
The food, says Egan, was likely oysters, which back then were plentiful. Patrons also ate hardtack, sometimes called “tooth dullers” — biscuits so hard you’d dip them in beer or grog just to soften them up. Refrigeration wasn’t yet common, so much of the food was pickled or preserved. Everything revolved around the drink. Order at the bar, and you’d get hardtack on the side, maybe some bread, maybe a bit of pork belly.
In 1899, Tom and John Healy bought the place and renamed it Healy’s Café. The rear portion of the saloon was converted into a proper dining room. Then in 1922, Peter D’Belles came calling and the name Pete’s Tavern has stuck ever since. Much of what you see today in the front bar today dates back to that original 1864 opening: the gorgeous, 40-foot rosewood bar, the ornate beveled back bar, old original mirrors, now smoky by time, the tin ceiling, the tile floor, the booths, and the cabinets above them.
“The only thing different [besides the cash registers] is the electrification of the chandeliers, and the air conditioning,” said Egan. “Apart from that it’s exactly as it was back then.”
The O. Henry Connection
There’s more to Pete’s reputation than its resilience. Come at Christmastime and the whole bar is awash with glowing lights. Massive wreaths beckon from outside. An impossible-to-miss giant inflatable snowman looms large. These decorations go up November 1st, Thanksgiving be damned.
It takes a second to place the reason for such relentless holiday cheer. Then you notice what’s printed on the awning: “The Tavern O. Henry Made Famous.” From 1903 to 1906, William Sydney Porter — writing under the pen name O. Henry — lived just down the street at 55 Irving Place. He was fond of sitting at his large bay window, guessing at the identities and private lives of passersby, and keeping an eye on his favorite drinking hole. As writers are prone to do, he spent his days holed up in the smoky tavern, often closing the place down.
Today Pete’s Tavern pays tribute: Inside, right by the door sits the O. Henry booth, oak, with designs hand-carved with gold inlay and dressed in writerly ephemera, including a letter he wrote deferring an invitation to a party, and a sketch of himself entering a café.
“Back then these would have been the sought-after seating areas,” explained Egan. O. Henry is said to have written at least part of “The Gift of the Magi” in his booth, in pencil, on his usual buff-colored paper, cigarette in hand.
He also wrote the bar itself into his story “The Lost Blend,” thinly disguised as “Kenealy’s” — a nod to Healy’s, the tavern’s name at the time. He is remembered as a hard drinker, eventually dying of cirrhosis of the liver, but he did have a favorite cocktail he called a “Mamie Taylor,” a fairer mixture of Scotch and ginger ale.
And the red holiday decorations? Those trace back to “The Gift of the Magi” itself, a Christmas tale, after all, about a poor young couple who each secretly sell their most prized possession to buy the other a gift, only to find both gifts now useless.
A History Full of Famous Faces
O. Henry isn’t the only literary name the tavern claims. A historical marker credits its nurturing atmosphere with inspiring Ludwig Bemelmans to write Madeline. While Egan claimed Bemelmans wrote at the bar, the writer also has a dedicated booth. It’s a shrine of sorts, with images of Madeline book covers, a Madeline doll, and a photo of John and Jackie Kennedy reading a Madeline book to a three-year-old Caroline. Legend has it Bemelmans also used the back of the tavern’s menus to write and illustrate some of the earliest drafts of Madeline.
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Alexander Dinelaris Jr., who won for Birdman, has been a fixture at the bar. And recently, bestselling novelist Amor Towles joined the roster of booth honorees (the cheekily named “Towles Booth”). The author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility has a spot in the dining room brimming with photographs, book covers in translation, and handwritten notes.
Towles’s ties to Pete’s go beyond the booth, though. A student of the tavern’s literary history, he helped connect the staff with the Random House team behind the O. Henry Prize: established in 1919, the oldest major prize for short fiction in America. Pete’s Tavern has hosted the reception for the award.
The bar and dining room walls are covered in photos of famous faces who’ve come through over the years: Tom Hanks, Joe Namath, Adam Sandler, Josh Hartnett (whose caption notes that he was “loved by everybody at Pete’s”). Martin Scorsese shares a laugh with Egan, Magic Johnson is very tall.
The tavern’s exterior and interior have shown up on screen dozens of times, too, in films like Endless Love (1981) and Across the Sea of Time (1995), and on television in Sex and the City and Seinfeld, among others. And the celebrity visits keep coming: Egan says the Knicks’ Landry Shamet recently stopped in to celebrate his engagement.
Pete’s Tavern Today
Gary Egan first started working at Pete’s in 1988, while on a college break from Ireland. He started as a porter in the basement. “The place was crazy,” he recalled. “Busy, busy, busy.”
He tells us this from a room on the floor above the restaurant that was once a part of the horse stables, and is now space for private events. Inside: its own bar and private restrooms, original brick walls lined with more celebrity photos.
Back in 1988, when Egan began, Pete’s was operating primarily as a pre-theater and lunch spot with a massive, inexpensive menu of heavy Italian fare — think chops, steaks, seafood, piccatas, marsalas, parmesans, and big pastas.
“There were three restaurants in the whole neighborhood,” he said. “Lunch had a line out the door.” The upstairs was used as an overflow spot. “Customers would go to the bar, have a martini, and wait for a table. Now, people don’t have time for lunch.”
Egan returned to Pete’s after college, was promoted from busboy to waiter, then kept working his way up. He’s been the general manager of Pete’s Tavern for 39 years, and in 1998 bought into the place as a partner.
Ahead of its time, Pete’s was one of the first places in the city to have outdoor seating, granted a permit in 1956, which Egan tells me was the second issued in the city. In 1966, The Gramercy Park Historic District— including Pete’s — was officially designated as a landmark. Over Egan’s tenure, what began as a neighborhood lunch spot solidified its reputation as an institution, a bit of history on stylish Irving Place, holding its own next to Michelin-starred tapas spot Casa Mono.
There was a threat of closure during the pandemic, but instead the owners renovated, stripping the bar back down to rosewood and rebuilding layer by layer. Then came a revamping of the menu, with the appointment of Patrick Connolly as the tavern’s first vice president of operations in 2025.
A James Beard Award winner, Connolly’s last restaurant, Rider, in Williamsburg, earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand. His mandate with the menu at Pete’s was not to reinvent, but to elevate. Today, the cocktail menu features espresso martinis and a Rosarita, a frozen rosé margarita that’s a hit on the outdoor patio. Alongside familiar comfort-food categories are chef-driven dishes like tuna tartare with corn chips and avocado, Roasted Shishito Peppers, Farro Risotto, Bolognese Turnovers, and salmon with chive beurre blanc. And of course, some O. Henry Chicken Wings.
Visit Pete’s Tavern daily from 12 p.m. to 2 a.m. 129 E. 18th St., Gramercy Park, petestavern.com
