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Courtesy of The Pat Connolly Tavern
Irish immigrant Pat Connolly opened his tavern in 1942.
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Courtesy of The Pat Connolly Tavern
Pat Connolly first arrived in the United States in 1927. He was young, in his early 20s, and had traveled all the way from County Galway in Ireland. He would eventually become the namesake and founder of Pat Connolly Tavern, a staple of the Irish community in St. Louis.
But first, he glued shoes together.
“I don’t know how you do that and jump to opening a bar, but somehow he did," says Joe Jovanovich, the bar's current owner and the grandson of Pat Connolly. "He was a bit of an entrepreneur.”
Connolly opened the bar in 1942, and in 1959, he sold it to Tom McDermott, who ran it for 20 years as McDermott’s. The new name stuck, even after Jovanovich’s mother bought it back in the 1980s.
“You have the history of two Irish families intertwined in the bar,” says Jovanovich.
Courtesy of The Pat Connolly Tavern
On parade day, Pat Connolly Tavern opens its doors at 6 a.m. and serves paradegoers breakfast.
The Pat Connolly Tavern has played a prominent role in the Ancient Order of Hibernians Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in Dogtown ever since the event's inception in 1984. The parade will kick off at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, March 17. But the reveling starts closer to breakfast time.
“We have the luxury of being right where the parade begins, at Tamm and Oakland,” Jovanovich says. The tavern opens its doors at 6 a.m. and hosts live music—which includes traditional Irish tunes as well as contemporary hits—all day and into the night.
In the '80s, when Jovanovich was a kid in Dogtown, he remembers the parade as a “quaint neighborhood event.” It was much smaller than it is today, devoid of parking headaches. All the students from St. James the Greater school marched in the parade on their mandatory day off. Jovanovich doesn't lament the event’s growth, but admits that something is lost as the parade expands.
“75 years ago, a lot of the Irish people in the neighborhood would have come from Ireland. It was a very tangible celebration back then,” Jovanovich says. “It’s what they were longing to get back to, in a way.”
The Pat Connolly Tavern draws, of course, much from its Irish heritage. But Jovanovich's intention has never been to replicate a pub in Galway. Pat Connolly, after all, brought his young Irish self to America, and that’s where his bar has been a vital part of the community for 75 years. It’s an American bar and a St. Louis bar, with a proud lineage that informs but doesn’t dominate. “It’s more about maintaining the product of an Irish immigrant,” says Jovanovich.
In other words, corned beef and cabbage aren’t menu staples, but you can bet they’ll be there on Friday.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians Saint Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on Friday, March 17 in Dogtown. The parade will begin at the intersection of Tamm and Oakland at 12:30 p.m. Visit the parade's website for more information. The Pat Connolly Tavern is planning a 75th anniversary celebration for the bar later this year but has not yet set a date for the event.
