CHAPTER ONE. Why Are We Going to Open a Place up There?
Joey McFadden was what the Irish call “a chancer”: a risk-taker, someone who pushes their luck. He loved practical jokes. Once, he’d gone into a bar dressed as a priest and bought a round for the gobsmacked patrons. When he was not working or at home in River Edge, New Jersey, with his family, Joey could be found hanging out across the Hudson River in one of the saloons in Inwood—the Irish neighborhood located above Washington Heights, at the northern tip of Manhattan. The McFadden brothers had grown up in Inwood, where their older cousin George McFadden owned the Inwood Lounge, a neighborhood drinking spot that closed in the 1970s. Though he’d moved to New Jersey to raise his family, Joey, like many of the Inwood Irish, was constantly drawn back to the comforts and familiarity of the old neighborhood. Especially its bars.
One day in 1983, Joey was drinking at one of those Inwood hangouts, Garryowens, and fell into a conversation with the owner, Billy Wall. Billy told Joey about one of his customers, John Kennedy, who worked in the real estate department at Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights. Kennedy had been charged with finding someone to open up a restaurant near the hospital. Apparently, some of the Presbyterian brass had worn out their welcome at the Columbia Faculty Club by regularly getting drunk and unruly. They wanted an Irish bar and grill with white tablecloths—not a deli or an old-man joint or a little Spanish spot, which is what the blocks around the hospital currently offered. Kennedy had already talked to dozens of New York bar and restaurant owners, but they had turned him down because of the neighborhood. Nobody wanted to open a place like that in Washington Heights in 1983. Too dangerous. Too many drugs. Too much crime. Kennedy had pitched the idea to Billy, and Billy was intrigued, but he didn’t have enough cash on hand to fund a new place. Billy thought of Joey. Everyone in Inwood knew Joey had money from that settlement.
Joey was taken with the idea. He’d talk to Kennedy. But first he called up his old friend Sean Cannon. Sean had run Tiana Beach Club in the Hamptons with Joey’s brother, Steve. Joey knew Sean had been looking to open another place ever since Tiana closed. But Sean was skeptical. “Washington Heights? Forget about it. It’s loaded with drugs. Nobody speaks English. Why are we going to open a place up there?”
Joey wouldn’t let it go. He knew that Sean was sometimes guilty of overthinking things, of believing that he was smarter than everyone else. A week later, Joey called Sean again. This time, he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll go take a look and let you know what I think.”
* * *
So it was that on a spring afternoon in 1983, Sean Cannon stood on a corner in Washington Heights, taking pictures of a row of shops on the far side of Broadway. Sean was tall and lean with a long face and a thin mustache, which angled down over his lip like the wings of a plane. He spoke with a deep, cigarette-roughened voice, choosing his words carefully. He was equally careful about his appearance, dressing in a neat, unfussy way: pressed trousers, collared shirt.
The crossroads where he stood was a busy one, Broadway intersecting with St. Nicholas Avenue and 169th Street. By some measure, you could say that it was the heart of the neighborhood, buses and cars circulating in every direction, a major subway station rumbling under his feet. One block south was the beige brick citadel of Presbyterian Hospital. A little farther down Broadway was the Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X was assassinated. Half a dozen blocks north, the George Washington Bridge conveyed motorists to and from New Jersey and New England.
Looking closer, Sean noticed details that confirmed his initial concerns. Nearby buildings were covered in graffiti, and people hanging out on the street corners appeared to be scanning traffic for potential customers. On the other hand, there wasn’t much competition. The nearest bars were the Rose of Killarney, on St. Nicholas, and the Reynolds Bar, six blocks uptown. Neither served much food. In fact, there weren’t many places of any kind to get a good sit-down meal. Over there was a McDonald’s. Across the street was a tiny corner spot, the Reme lunch counter. A block south there was a so-so Italian restaurant. And, of course, for carryout food, there was a handful of bodegas and delis scattered here and there. But that was pretty much it for this section of the Heights. Sean took it all in, turning now and then to keep an eye on a drug deal taking place farther east on 169th Street. A car with sky-blue Jersey plates pulled up. The guy on the corner approached, leaning over to speak into the rolled-down window.
Sean turned his gaze west, back across Broadway, and snapped a picture. The shops filled the ground floor of a six-story apartment building that took up half the block. An old Greek diner, the Gold Medal, occupied the corner slot. Next door, as you went south, there was a haberdashery; then a pharmacy; and lastly, a Chinese takeout, La Muralla China—the Great Wall of China. If they weren’t already, those unlucky enterprises would soon be out of business. Their long-term leases had expired, and their landlord, Presbyterian Hospital, had them on month-to-month extensions until they could find a new tenant—a tenant willing to open up a bar and restaurant. That was the brutal and capricious nature of the real estate business in New York. A landlord could snuff out years of your work seemingly on a whim.
* * *
Sean was no stranger to the area. He’d been born there, in 1942, back when it was part of the Hibernian Archipelago, a group of Irish enclaves that had formed around the Catholic churches of Upper Manhattan. Sean entered the world at a small hospital on Edgecombe Avenue by Coogan’s Bluff—an escarpment that overlooked the Harlem River. His father owned a bar called Paddy Kennon’s way downtown. It was near the Hudson and was favored by dockworkers. During the Second World War, the family moved to Brooklyn and then north, to Yonkers. Sean worked at his father’s bar as a teenager, passing through the Heights each day. Over the previous two decades, he’d seen the slow transformation of the neighborhood. As the city’s economy had declined in the 1970s and violent crime had risen, white residents—mostly Irish and Jewish—fled to the suburbs, and the Dominicans moved in, the shop signs changing from English to Spanish. Some people he knew called it an invasion, but Sean was not as territorial. The city was always in flux; you had to be adaptable.
While at Manhattan College, Sean got a job as a busboy at George McFadden’s Inwood Lounge. George was renowned in the neighborhood for his communitarian spirit. If you were short on cash, George would extend you credit until you got paid; if you needed a job, George would connect you with someone who was hiring; if you needed a place to live, George knew all the supers on the block. Irish Inwood, with its dozens of bars, became the center of Sean’s social life. Often, he and his coworkers would stay at the lounge long after it had closed, drinking and bullshitting, sometimes going directly to early morning classes from these sessions, sleepless and still drunk.
Though he loved to drink, Sean had no intention of following in his father’s footsteps as a saloon owner. He was pursuing a business degree and imagined a future for himself as “a businessman.” What that meant exactly, he wasn’t sure, but it didn’t involve pouring pints. Yet even as he looked toward that vague career path, Sean was being inculcated into the close-knit world of New York’s Irish barmen—a multigenerational network of publicans and bartenders who would later help him find work, open businesses, and solve problems. In the end, the connections Sean forged in the saloons of Inwood would prove far more valuable than those he made in the classrooms of Manhattan College.
In August 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, pushing the United States closer to all-out war in Vietnam. To avoid being drafted into the army, Sean enlisted in the naval reserve. He was selected for pilot training and spent the next five years flying transports around naval bases on the East Coast. At the end of his military service, Sean abandoned his pursuit of a business career when Pan Am offered him a job as a pilot, but 1969 brought a recession, and the offer was rescinded. He wound up back in New York City, bartending. He worked at Jimmy Byrnes’s saloon on Second Avenue with Steve McFadden. He did shifts at Gladstone, Plushbottom and Co. on Third Avenue. He was finally coming around to the idea of opening a saloon of his own, maybe with one of the McFaddens. He and Steve were living together in a bachelor apartment on Lexington Avenue and 95th Street. When they weren’t working, they liked to hang out at a local pub called Pudding’s. One of the bartenders there was a funny, quick-witted guy from Yorkville, a poet and storyteller named Peter Walsh. He was another potential business partner.
In 1975, Sean and Steve leased Tiana Beach Club in Hampton Bays. That spring they dug out the buildings on the plot, clearing the flotsam and jetsam left from the winter storms, repairing anything that had broken, and repainting the exterior in time for the opening. Tiana was in action from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The music and partying started at 11:00 a.m. and went into the night. Tiana and its neighbors, the Boardy Barn and Cat Ballou’s, catered to the same patron base: sunburned working-class weekenders and day-trippers from the “Celt Belt” of Northern Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens, with a scattering of outer-borough Italians, and a handful of Long Island locals thrown in.
Larry Kirwan, who would later front the band Black 47, performed on that circuit as part of a progressive-rock duo called Turner and Kirwan of Wexford. “It was the paradise of the proletariat,” he recalled. “People would come up in droves from the beach. The price of beer was incredibly cheap. The idea was to get them in there and get them soused and then raise the prices around eight o’clock.” According to Kirwan, drug use was widespread at those beachside bars, and included “liquid speed,” which patrons added to drinks with an eyedropper. “Speed makes you drink more,” Kirwan recalled. “So, the whole place, including us, would be speeding our butts off. It was just a wild scene.”
When the season ended, Sean and Steve worked at saloons and restaurants around Manhattan. By this time, they’d moved into a large apartment on Park Avenue. From one of its windows, you could see the planes taking off and landing at LaGuardia Airport, a vision of Sean’s lost career. A little later, Peter Walsh of Pudding’s moved in with them. The apartment became the setting for impromptu parties. The front door was left unlocked so that members of the building staff could come up and join the fun during their breaks. Sometimes they were late getting back to work, causing other residents to wait impatiently for an elevator or a doorman to summon a cab.
The good times continued for four years, until the property owner Sean and Steve leased Tiana from failed to pay his real estate taxes. The plot was sold at auction. Sean and Steve put together an investment group and tried to purchase the land, but they were outbid. However, now that he’d had a taste of success in the bar business, Sean was eager to do it again. Steve had opened a new place on 42nd Street; maybe this spot in Washington Heights would be Sean’s chance to hit it big.
* * *
Sean crossed Broadway and walked around the 169th Street side of the Gold Medal diner. He took a picture of the red metal kitchen door, which was locked, then went back to the corner and walked south toward the hospital. The sidewalks were full of people—doctors, nurses, medical students, discharged patients, and families who’d come to visit ailing relatives. Where were all of these people going to eat lunch? he wondered. Surely some of them needed a drink too. He crossed 168th Street and entered the main hospital building. Again, crowds of people. He wandered around looking at the medical suites and the doctors’ offices. It was a bustling little city within the city. In here it was easy to forget the drug deals and other crimes taking place outside. He noticed a barbershop. Barbers were like cabdrivers and bartenders. They knew the secret lives of their neighborhoods. Sean waited, reading the paper. When his turn came, he got in the chair and started talking to the barber, saying he was thinking of opening a restaurant on Broadway, a block north of the hospital. “What can you tell me about the area?” he asked. The barber said he’d never set foot on Broadway. “I live in Jersey. I’ve worked here thirty years. I drive over the bridge in the morning, park my car in the garage downstairs, come up here, cut hair all day, go back down to the garage, get in my car, and drive home. What do I need to go out to Broadway for?”
But Sean thought differently. Newly shorn, he went home and called up Joey. “I’m in.”
CHAPTER TWOIn over Their Heads
Sean and Joey incorporated themselves as 600 W. 169th Street Restaurant Inc., got a verbal commitment from Kennedy and Presbyterian, and went to work. As an inducement, Presbyterian would collect no rent until the place was open. To further save money, Sean and Joey, who were equal partners in this venture, would do as much of the demolition themselves as they could. They began in the space that had once been La Muralla China. The first sledgehammer blow released a horde of cockroaches. It was a bad omen for the months ahead.
To negotiate the lease, Sean had hired an expensive attorney referred to him through connections at the New York State Liquor Authority. He knew from his experience with Tiana Beach Club, where a simple nondisturbance agreement would have allowed him and Steve to retain their lease, that having a good lawyer was essential. For that reason, he and Joey were willing to pay extra for top-notch representation. But, all appearances to the contrary, Sean quickly realized they’d hired a dud. In a meeting at the offices of the hospital’s attorneys, it became apparent that the man negotiating on their behalf—the man wearing the $600 pair of shoes—hadn’t even read the proposed lease. Every time Sean raised a concern, the attorney would reassure him, “Don’t worry, we’ll work it out.” They fired him on the spot.
In desperate need of new legal representation, Sean and Joey turned to a reliable source—the Inwood Lounge. Through a former coworker, Sean got the name of Saul Victor, whose practice specialized in commercial real estate—especially restaurants and hotels. Sean called up Victor and explained the situation, but Victor made it clear he wasn’t taking on any new clients. Sean kept him on the line, talking about Washington Heights and the Bronx. Victor had been born in the South Bronx and went to night school at City College in Upper Manhattan. He still had a soft spot for those areas. Like a bartender with a flush customer, Sean schmoozed and parlayed Victor until he finally agreed. Victor negotiated a twenty-one-year lease, which was signed on September 23, 1983.
In the meantime, the Gold Medal, the haberdashery, and the pharmacy all closed and vacated the premises. Sean and Joey came up with a plan for how they wanted to lay out the space. There would be three main rooms: a bar, a dining room, and a function room, plus the capacious basement where the liquor safe, walk-in freezers, beer barrels, and prep kitchen would go, along with a low-ceilinged office that was as cramped as the captain’s quarters in a submarine. It was going to be a big restaurant, 4,200 square feet and able to seat 250 people. They hired an architect to put their vision on paper and a contractor to make it a reality, but soon they realized that they were in over their heads—financially and otherwise. Sean was astounded at how quickly the fifty grand he’d saved up disappeared. And Joey seemed to have gone through his settlement money by then too. But George McFadden, who believed in Sean and Joey’s venture, came to the rescue, opening a home-equity line of credit on his primary residence to help finance the construction. Sean also took out a $210,000 mortgage on the business.
That kept the wolf from the door for a while, but Sean continued to look for investors. He asked his roommate, Peter Walsh, if he wanted to come in for 20 percent of the business—taking 10 percent each from his and Joey’s shares. Peter, who’d recently sold his stake in Pudding’s, loved the idea that Coogan’s was close to the medical center. Being near a hospital or a funeral home was a virtual guarantee of success for a bar, he believed. Peter thought highly of Sean, but he had concerns about Joey. Sure, he was great fun to drink and tell stories with, but was he too wild and unpredictable to be a reliable business partner? Steve was the McFadden you wanted to be in business with. In the end, Peter invested a small amount of cash with Sean and received no ownership share or decision-making authority. If the business was profitable, there would be dividends down the road.
With the influx of money, the place started coming together. Sean found a lumber dealer in the Bronx who had enough mahogany to shape the large rectangular bar top he’d designed. They began thinking about the menu. It was going to be simple: burgers, steak and potatoes, French dip sandwiches. They’d also come up with a name. At first, they had considered calling the place Maxwell Hall after the nurse’s residence at Columbia, but some alumni from the School of Nursing had voiced their disapproval, and Sean settled instead on Coogan’s, named after Coogan’s Bluff, near where he’d been born.
One afternoon, as the restaurant was taking shape, there was a knock at the door. Outside on the sidewalk Sean saw a man dressed in an elegantly tailored suit. Local state assemblyman Denny Farrell was, in some respects, an embodiment of Upper Manhattan’s heterogeneous population. Born of African American and Irish parents, he’d worked his way up from an early career as a garage attendant and cab driver to become a member of the “Harlem Clubhouse,” an informal political organization that also included Congressman Charlie Rangel and future New York City mayor David Dinkins. Farrell himself was then preparing to run for mayor against Ed Koch. Tall, charismatic, and urbane, Farrell was skilled at power politics. He introduced himself to Sean. “So, what’s going on in here?” he asked. Sean told him that he was planning to open up a bar and restaurant. “Need some help?” Farrell inquired. At first, Sean wasn’t sure what Farrell meant by “help,” but the assemblyman clarified: “I may have some people who need work.” Sean said, “OK,” and gave Farrell his phone number.
As construction continued, Sean began to have his own misgivings about Joey. Somehow it seemed that Joey always got to the mail before Sean did. Money disappeared unexpectedly from the business account. One afternoon when he was paying the bills, Sean saw that there were checks missing from the back of the checkbook. He knew that Joey had taken them—likely to pay for drugs or to pay off gambling debts.
He was dismayed more than he was angry. The McFaddens were like family to him. And this place had been Joey’s idea, after all. He wanted it to succeed for both of them. But he understood now that Peter had been right: there was no way Coogan’s was going to prosper with Joey as a partner. The next time Joey came in, Sean confronted him. “You gotta get out of this, or it’s going to end up bloody, Joey,” he said. “You gotta sell your stake.” Joey, downcast, agreed to sell his share of the business. Things would not be the same between Sean and the McFaddens after that.
It was a decision that solved one problem but created others. If Joey went, Sean would have to repay George as well. How, though? His savings were gone, and the mortgage funds were dwindling fast. One option was just to sell the whole damn thing to someone else—his stake as well as the McFaddens’. But he felt in his gut that Coogan’s was going to succeed. All he had to do was hang on, get it opened, and the money would start flowing in. The only other option was to take on new partners. But who would want to come in at this point? Peter had already turned him down, save for that small investment. It seemed like every barman in Inwood had passed on the location. That left only the hospital. He contacted John Kennedy at Presbyterian, who put together a small group of investors who would be able to buy 60 percent of the business—the 50 percent owned by the McFaddens plus 10 percent of Sean’s stake. That got Joey out. It would take a couple more years to pay off George, whose money was tied to the mortgage Sean had taken out. But now Sean suddenly found himself a minority owner of his bar and restaurant.
* * *
Sean’s new partners were Peter Kennedy, Kevin Kiernan, and Larry Schwartz (KKS). All three worked in hospital administration in the city, but like many men, they’d long dreamed of owning a bar. The new owners knew little about the saloon trade, which left Sean still very much in charge of getting Coogan’s up and running and managing its daily operations.
Financially secure again, Sean focused on getting the doors open. The plywood fencing came down, revealing the white walls and black doors of the bar’s exterior. A grid of small square windows flanked each door. The name of the bar was painted in white cursive over the doors, “Coogan’s,” surrounded by a lasso that emanated from the “g.” Above the main entrance, there was a long awning that projected across the sidewalk, inviting entry. “Daily Specials | Restaurant | Tap Room | Party Room” announced the exterior signage. Inside, the décor was simple and unpretentious: exposed brick, wood paneling, and wood floors. Banked black leather seats around the edge of the dining room, with wooden tables and chairs in the middle. Green tablecloths. The bar felt like a pub, and the high-ceilinged, light-filled dining room resembled a homespun Viennese café.
Early in the fall of 1985, they put the final touches in place. Ice machines and other appliances were installed. The interior walls were painted white and green. Lamps with curved and conical shades were suspended from the high ceiling. Sean hired staff: an Irish chef; Dominican kitchen workers and porters (two of them referred by Farrell); Irish waitresses from his many bar connections; and a manager named John Armstrong who’d worked at Tiana. The beer and the liquor arrived, and the bar was stocked.
Copyright © 2023 by Jon Michaud