My Irish ancestors arrived in Chicago more than 130 years ago, and in the absence of many details, photos or stories, I’ve always been drawn to reminders of Irish influence on this city. That includes, of course, our Irish pubs, which feature prominently in Irish culture and in my own family lore.
So when a Curious City listener asked why there are so many Irish pubs in this city, I took the bait.
We don’t know for certain if there are more Irish pubs today than, say, Polish or Mexican bars. But since the Irish bars tend to put their national identity front and center in their branding, they are certainly more visible.
Regardless, on its face, the answer seems simple: Chicago has a long history of Irish immigration, and the Irish love their pubs, right?
But it turns out that’s just the beginning.
After talking with historians and authors — and tracking down more details about my own family history — I’ve learned the answer to why we have so many Irish pubs in Chicago has as much to do with history and nostalgia as it does foreign affairs, politics and, of course, capitalism.
Saloons as social service agencies for early immigrants
The pub in Irish culture serves as a community center of sorts — a place to share news, hold meetings, celebrate baptisms, and mourn losses.
“If you go to Ireland the pub is central to any town,” said Liz Garibay, a beer historian and founder of the Beer Culture Center, a Chicago-based non-profit organization. “Ireland is particularly special in that life in that town revolves around that pub.”
Irish immigrants brought this pub culture with them when they began arriving in the U.S. en masse in the 1830s. But in their new country, it became even more central to their survival. The pub became a kind of social service agency — a place where a recent arrival could find a job, housing and get plugged into a community of people who shared their language, traditions and culture.
Sister Mary Sheehan is a distant relative of mine who grew up in Bridgeport above her father’s pub, Sheehan’s, near Halsted and 37th Street. She described it as a place where people “could count on help if they needed it.” She told me about an Irish man who arrived in Chicago in 1916 with no family, no contacts and no place to stay. But he was from County Kerry, near our ancestors’ farm, and so the one thing he had was the address of her father’s bar. “Somebody would have told him that this would be a good place to connect,” she said.
Tied houses and new opportunities
In the 1880s, Chicago City Council and the state of Illinois increased saloon licensing fees tenfold. While this effort was ostensibly meant to curb public drunkenness and fund the city’s expanding police force, it had the unintended effect of leading to a boom of saloons, many of them Irish.
At the time, the regional brewing industry was growing. Brewing companies saw small and budding saloon proprietors struggling to pay the new licensing fees. So they bought, built or sponsored “tied houses,” or saloons that would agree to sell their beers exclusively.
The tied-house system brought the number of bars in Chicago to a historical high. By 1905, the city counted 8,097 saloons, or one saloon for every 239 residents. And many Irish emigrants — including my ancestors — used that startup support to break into the business.
Through interviewing family elders and finding old census and other records, I learned that my great-great-grandfather John Patrick Sheehan arrived in Chicago from County Kerry, Ireland in 1892 at the age of 18.
Like many immigrants at that time, he initially found work in the Union Stockyards. He married Sarah Collins, the daughter of an Irish emigrant. They were able to open their own saloon with the help of the Pilsen-based Schoenhofen Brewing Company. They lived in an apartment above the saloon on the corner of 47th St. and Racine. My great-grandmother and several of her siblings were born and raised there.
“I know they didn’t have indoor plumbing,” said Bob Sheehan, a distant relative in my grandmother’s generation. “So there was an outhouse out back. You could imagine going to the outhouse in January in Chicago.”
Bob tells me that John Patrick and Sarah Sheehan sold their bar in 1919, at the dawn of Prohibition.
But hundreds of bars stayed open, operating just under the radar — including one owned by the family of another distant relative, Sister Mary Sheehan.
Sister Mary Sheehan was born in 1933 and grew up hearing those Prohibition-era stories. “I know they had a fire. My brother was a little kid playing with matches and started a couch on fire,” she said. They didn’t want the firefighters to arrive and discover their stash of liquor in the house, so “they had to throw it out the window.”
Her father’s saloon was also near the stockyards, and she remembers the boilermakers’ union holding weekly meetings in the bar on Monday nights.
“Men would come on that night if they didn’t have a job,” she said. “They’d be there, you know, trying to see the agent.”
And, of course, she remembers the parties.
“There’d be a lot of old country people that’d come,” she said. “And they’d have dancing … They call them Irish sets. And somebody would have the accordion and they’d go at it.”
Decline of the local
Over the years, as the next generation took over the bar, and then the next, and the centrality of the “local” in the lives of the Irish and their descendants diminished.
After changes in immigration law in the 1920s, the number of new Irish immigrants arriving in Chicago also declined precipitously.
Meanwhile, corner bars of all stripes started to feel the pinch from both economic and political forces. More TVs in living rooms in the 1950s meant fewer reasons to head to the pub. Then, the decline of manufacturing in the 1960s and 1970s meant the blue-collar workers who used to head in for a pint after their shifts stopped coming around.
And while all of this was happening, as part of their law-and-order approach, both Daley administrations made it more difficult to obtain or keep a liquor license.
But this wasn’t the end of the Irish pub in Chicago — far from it. Near the end of the 20th century, one bar opened in Chicago that would set the stage for a new era of Irish pubs, in Chicago and globally.
Irish “pub in a box”
In 1986, Kitty O’Shea’s opened on the ground level of the Chicago Hilton with the mission of creating an “authentic Irish pub experience” in downtown Chicago. Its owners paid careful attention to detail, traveling to Dublin to research the look and feel of some of its treasured pubs. They flew in Irish bartenders with authentic brogues and offered nightly Irish entertainment. It quickly became the most successful Hilton hotel restaurant in the world, according to news reports.
The timing was impeccable. The end of the conflict known as The Troubles in the mid-’90s ushered in a new phase of foreign investment and global reach — and all things Irish started trending in the US. Think of shows like Riverdance, books like Angela’s Ashes, and movies like The Commitments and Far and Away, starring Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Even Irish musicians like U2, the Cranberries and Sinéad O’Connor rode this wave.
Journalist Mike Danahey, who co-wrote a book called Chicago’s Historic Irish Pubs with local author Allison Hantschel, said “Irish became the hot ethnicity to be” during this period.
“The Celtic Tiger rose and people saw you could make money off this stuff,” he said. “And the marketing geniuses at Guinness have a lot to do with it.”
Guinness realized that wherever Irish bars existed, they sold a lot of beer. So, they began consulting with entrepreneurs interested in opening more Irish pubs. It was a win-win.
This eventually gave way to a range of middlemen companies that today help design, curate and open Irish pubs across the world.
Chief among them is the Irish Pub Concept, creators of the Fadó franchise. They offer consulting and resources for prospective pub owners, with several templates to choose from (including Celtic, English and country-style bars). The company says it helped launch upwards of 6,500 Irish pubs across the world. They provide everything — down to the brick-a-brack and employee training manuals.
These mass-produced Irish pubs have been criticized for offering a caricaturized, Disneyfied version of Irish culture — an Irish “pub in a box,” if you will. But they are also hugely popular.
Chicago still has its share of Irish pubs that grew organically and are owned and operated by Irish emigrants and their descendants. They include Shinnick’s Pub, which has been in Bridgeport for 80 years; Chief O’Neill’s, named in honor of an Irish-born Chicago police chief and opened by Irish emigrants in the ’90s; and the Fifth Province in the Irish-American Heritage Center. These places didn’t need to consult anyone on authenticity. And they continue to draw Irish emigrants, locals and people like me — the descendants of those early arrivals.
“I think people are always looking for a home,” said Allison Hantschel, co-author of Chicago’s Historic Irish Pubs. “And I think the idea of, you know, of the Irish pub is that it’s home. It means you have a spot, you have a place where you feel comfortable. And I think that continues to resonate with people.”
And maybe that is ultimately why we have so many Irish pubs in Chicago and elsewhere. They’re profitable, yes, but for a reason: they offer not just a pint, but a feeling, a sense of home, and a way for people like me to feel closer to their roots, their ancestors and their kin.
Jessica Pupovac is a Chicago-based freelance reporter, editor and audio producer.
