P. J. Clarke's

915 3rd Avenue | also 205 East 55th Street, 919 3rd Avenue | East Midtown | built 1970

Open on the map13 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1884

    A saloon with a mahogany bar and stained glass opens in a four-story building at Third Avenue and 55th Street

    A four-story brick building went up on this corner after the Civil War, with roomers living above a retail space. Around 1884 the ground floor became a saloon run by a Mr. Jennings, fitted with beveled and stained glass, a carved mahogany bar and a built-in Regulator clock. The men's room had an unusual curved stained-glass ceiling.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1909

    July 16

    A stranger leaves the saloon with a baby and vanishes

    On a rainy July 16, 1909, James Dinneny and his wife ducked in with their ten-month-old daughter Elizabeth, and a woman in black held the baby. The bartender put Dinneny and the woman out, but three hours later they returned with the child. After Dinneny went home and his wife asked where the baby was, they rushed back to the saloon: the woman and Elizabeth were gone.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1912

    Bartender Paddy Clarke buys the saloon from its English owner

    The saloon's owner, Mr. Duneen, decides in 1912 to go back to England and sells the business to his bartender, Patrick Joseph Clarke, an Irish immigrant from County Leitrim. Customers start calling it Paddy Clarke's, plain Clarke's or P. J. Clarke's. Clarke owns the business but not the building, whose owner reportedly offered to sell it to him several times and was refused.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1943

    The Lavezzo family buys the building and turns down Clarke's offer to pay more

    In 1943 the Breslin estate sells the Third Avenue building, which an operating firm resells the next month, for $19,000, to Matilda R. Lavezzo. The Lavezzo family already runs an antiques and restoration shop on the second floor. Her son Dan later said that Paddy Clarke came the next day and offered $10,000 more than the price, but the family refused and kept the building.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1945

    Billy Wilder discards footage shot at the bar for The Lost Weekend and has it rebuilt in Hollywood

    Wilder made P. J. Clarke's the model for Nat's Bar in The Lost Weekend. After shooting inside the saloon, he threw out the footage because the Third Avenue elevated train rattled past and disturbed the action. Designers measured and drew the room, and a replica was built in Hollywood, though the set was not an exact copy.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1948

    Paddy Clarke dies at 63 and his heirs sell the bar to the Lavezzos

    Patrick J. Clarke dies in 1948 at the age of 63. His heirs try to run the bar for a year, but infighting among them leads to a sale of the business to the Lavezzo family, who already own the building. From then on the saloon and its walls share one owner.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1949

    February

    Irish patrons fall silent after the 1949 Northern Ireland election results

    After the February 11, 1949 Northern Ireland election results come in, a New York Times reporter describes a hush at Paddy Clarke's. Even the jukeboxes of Irish songs are turned low, and the mostly Irish-born or Irish-descended customers talk in subdued tones. At mid-century Clarke's is still mainly an Irish-American bar.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  8. 1955

    Marilyn Monroe won't go inside during an afternoon with Truman Capote

    Truman Capote's short story "A Beautiful Child" recounts an afternoon he spent with Marilyn Monroe in 1955, and P. J. Clarke's appears in it. In the story Monroe refuses to enter the bar because she dislikes its clientele. The saloon also appears in Patricia Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train," where a character says he went to Clarke's on Third Avenue.

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 1956

    February 16

    A Great Dane keeps a hamburger account at the bar, eating up to 42 at a sitting

    Writing in the New York Times on February 16, 1956, Meyer Berger described a well-off regular whose Great Dane had its own hamburger tab at P. J. Clarke's. The dog would walk to the food counter and eat between thirty and forty-two hamburgers at once, paying 40 cents instead of 45 because he skipped the rolls.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  10. 1958

    Buddy Holly proposes to Maria Elena on their first date at Clarke's

    Rock and roll pioneer Buddy Holly proposed to his future wife, Maria Elena, at P. J. Clarke's on their first date in 1958. Forgotten New York also lists Frank Sinatra, Jackie Onassis and Nat King Cole among the regulars, and says Dick Clark came here after finishing his New Year's Rockin' Eve broadcasts.

    Source: Forgotten New York

  11. 1965

    Maitre d' Joe Allen leaves to open his own restaurant

    In 1965 Joe Allen, the saloon's maitre d', leaves Clarke's and opens a Manhattan restaurant under his own name. Another alumnus, bartender Wes Joice, later opens the literary hangout The Lion's Head. Both went on to run places of their own.

    Source: Wikipedia

  12. 1967

    September 9

    Tishman plans a 40-story skyscraper built around the saloon to preserve it

    Tishman Realty bought every property on the east side of Third Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets except the Lavezzo family's corner. The New York Times reported on September 9, 1967 that the tower would rise around the saloon, which would stand in a plaza. The upper two floors of the old building were cut off.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  13. 1970

    December

    A fifth-floor fire kills three people in the new tower beside the saloon

    919 Third Avenue, the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill tower that wraps around P. J. Clarke's, had a deadly start: in December 1970 a fire on its fifth floor killed three people. The tragedy led to Local Law 5 of 1973, which required fire safety directors in tall and heavily occupied buildings.

    Source: Forgotten New York

Further reading

Nearby

All 43 buildings with stories in East Midtown