It has been 25 years since Chicago`s Robert Emmett ”Butch” McGuire borrowed $560 from his mother, bought an ex-striptease joint on Division Street, turned it into the nation`s first ”singles bar” and changed forever the way young Americans live.
It was a different world in the spring of 1961. President John F. Kennedy was in Paris preparing for a summit meeting in Vienna with Nikita Khrushchev
(Jackie Kennedy created front-page news on their trip by wearing an alluring Parisian hat), Otto Kerner was in the Illinois governor`s mansion, Ernie Banks was at shortstop for the Cubs, and thousands of young Chicago college graduates, living four, five and six to a rental apartment in the Old Town and Near North neighborhoods, were pushing for something to do. They were a happening in search of a house, and Butch McGuire, who was one of them, built the house.
At the time, McGuire`s smarter friends thought the saloon was only the craziest of Butch`s crazy stunts. After all, to win a bet after a six-pack or two that same spring, he had packed his 6-foot, 220-pound frame, plus jumbo Honduran cigar, into a rug dryer and told his friends to start it rolling. It was Butch`s way of whiling away the time in a North Avenue laundromat near his Old Town apartment. He almost asphyxiated before his frantic thrashing persuaded his buddies to open the door and stop the machine. A few weeks later, with the aid of his Old Town and South Side friends and perhaps half the stewardesses living in Chicago, he opened the door to his saloon.
For 25 years it has been quite a spin. From the New Frontier through Vietnam and Watergate to today`s world of Yuppies, ”Butch McGuire`s USA” has prospered as perhaps the premier saloon in America, selling draft beer and dreams in about equal measure. And the distinctive green-and-white ”Butch McGuire`s USA” logo, like everything else connected with the saloon, evolved from Butch`s own experience: a grinning oversized leprechaun (a caricature of Butch) perched inside a circle (the rug dryer).
McGuire`s has probably sold enough draft beer to run a river from Division Street to the Gulf of Mexico. The place is part saloon, part restaurant (since 1968), part antique store and art gallery (Butch is an impulsive collector) and, mostly, a state of mind, offering the illusion that lurking somewhere beyond the next barstool may be one`s next great love or
(for the cynics) sexual adventure.
As for Butch, the thrill is in seeing others have a good time. A Santa Claus figure both in style and substance, McGuire created a kind of saloon science that has made memories for the customers, money for the house and 20 carbon copies right outside his front door–not to mention the scores of others from coast to coast. From the ”peanut” bars of the 1960s (the bar provided free peanuts whose shells the customers were encourged to throw on the floor) to the ”fern” bars of the 1980s (the customer is surrounded by a garden of hanging plants), McGuire`s has led the way.
The original, however, remains unique, and to cite but one example, it is the only saloon in Chicago to adopt a charity–Santa Claus Anonymous, Inc., to provide Christmas gifts for Chicago`s poor children. For another, there really is a Butch McGuire. This is not another restaurant or saloon blueprinted at corporate headquarters with a made-up name like Ed Debevic`s.
For a third, Butch has, by attending to the basics, been able to make the subtle changes that have kept him at the top of a treacherous business in which the mortality rate after five years is nearly 100 percent. (”I mean 100 percent,” he exclaims. ”Look around Division and Rush Streets–the places may still be saloons, but I guarantee you that after five years the owners have changed. The corporate saloon is often owned by casual investors who are in the business for fun or a write-off. After the fun wears thin and the write-offs are no longer worth it, they get out. McGuire`s is a family business serving the neighborhood.”
McGuire`s claims to have helped make 5,000 marriages–”more than Holy Name Cathedral”–though the many divorces go unclaimed. Some customers, like me, have been at McGuire`s through three distinctive decades–meeting and marrying during the 1960s, divorcing and (older but no wiser) starting over during the ”Me Decade” of the 1970s and, resignedly, bringing their children for Sunday brunch during the 1980s.
Butch summarizes: ”During the 1960s young people lived and traveled together and were into group activities; in the 1970s we saw the peak of the sexual revolution, with women aggressively seeking out men; and in the 1980s the name of the game is survival, with people demonstrating more caution about both drinking and sex. The 1970s were the transition years, and the big difference between when we started in 1961 and today is that the 1960s male has become today`s Yuppie woman–all business and no foolishness. Also, while the men of my generation drank beer and whiskey, a lot of the Yuppies prefer carrot juice–or water. And business is much tougher today because people have less disposable income. Today`s Yuppie woman has most of the lines–about her IRAs and Keogh plan and investment portfolio–and, thanks to herpes and AIDS, the sexual revolution is long gone.” But McGuire`s lives on.
According to Gaelic legend, to capture a leprechaun meant that treasure was nearby; according to his friends, to be with Butch McGuire is to know that good times, great parties and special people are nearby.
Himself oversized, mischievous and elflike, Butch is somewhat of a contradictory figure. For one thing, he refuses to give his exact age (calling it ”an Irish custom”). A man of tremendous discipline and drive, he nevertheless drank and ate himself into an almost-fatal heart attack. A superb businessman with both verve and vision, he hates to be bothered with the books. Often in the saloon`s early years, in his rush to leave and close the late bars across the street, he stashed the night`s receipts behind a painting rather than take the time to fill out a desposit slip. The king of Division Street, Chicago`s ”Street of Dreams” (often broken), he has, while living in the heart of the singles ghetto, remained a one-woman man and raised three children. A man who takes a sincere interest in his employees–often becoming their pal–he will fire anyone on the spot who commits his pet peeve
–forgetting to say ”hello,” ”good-bye” or ”thank you” to a customer. An owner so tough that he now charges Yuppies $1 for a glass of water (”to dissuade the gazers from walking in, casing the scene for two hours and drinking four glasses of water–if you charge them, at least they move up to a Coke”), he has given much of his fortune to charity and is widely known as the softest touch on the street. Butch McGuire, the hard-nosed saloonkeeper, is also an honorary Girl Scout.
”My generation had nowhere to go to drink,” Butch recalls. (He acquired the nickname in first grade, and it is now his legal name). ”The neighborhood bars in Old Town drew an older crowd, and they didn`t want us; the joints on Rush and Division were mostly what I call `bus-stop` joints, a rip-off with inflated prices, watered-down drinks and dancing girls who wanted to roll the dice with you. So I decided to open a saloon for myself and my friends.”
An architectural-engineering graduate, Butch was then an industrial designer and was living with three pals in a four-bedroom house on Orleans Street in Old Town that rented for $75 a month. All the ingredients were there for a ”floating saloon”: The house had a huge living room and dining room that easily held 100, one barrel of beer cost only $12 and poured up to 200 glasses, and Chicago was a major center for the airlines, the base for thousands of American, TWA and United stews.
One of McGuire`s roommates, Ed Stark, recalls: ”Butch was a one-man party operation. He knew every stew on Goethe Street, and every weekend we had big parties. In those days we had a very full life. Butch would go out and buy barrels of beer and chili, spaghetti or a pork roast. He`d put the food in the oven, tap the beer, get out his Rolodex and go to the telephone. By the time the food was ready, the party was rolling. For special occasions, we`d have vodka and grape juice mixed in the bathtub!”
Another pal, Dick Caruso, who met McGuire in 1st grade on the South Side, adds, ”Butch McGuire was born happy. And he has tremendous stamina. He used to have three separate groups of friends so that when one group was tired of carousing and needed a rest, he could move on to the next. He was one of those guys who could stay up drinking all night and be on the job–alert–at 7:30 a.m.”
Butch recalls: ”It was more fun in those days. Things were just beginning to happen in Chicago, and there was an excitement in the air. We all had high hopes and we all had a little money to spend.”
Both the great love of Butch`s life–saloons–and his formal education were gifts from his father, Francis Willis ”Mickey” McGuire, whose grandparents, Butch says, ”got out of Ireland just before the famine (of 1847).” Mickey McGuire grew up in Aberdeen, S.D., acquired a law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and moved to the South Side of Chicago in the 1920s to set up a law and real estate practice. He summoned to join him from South Dakota his high school sweetheart, Jeannette Burke, Butch`s mother.
”Dad almost never drank,” Butch recalls, ”but his passion was politics, and in those days South Side politics was practiced in the saloons. He was a precinct captain for the Democratic Party. We lived in Chatham, the South Side area roughly between Stony Island and State and 79th and 87th. As Dad became successful, we moved into the Beverly area. That was the standard pattern of migration for successful Irish–from Chatham to either Beverly on the west or Flossmoor on the South. From the time I was 5, Dad used to take me with him to work the saloons, places like Paul`s Swiss Chalet and Schalk`s Bowling Alley.
”Since my parents` brothers and sisters had come to Chicago from South Dakota, the McGuires had quite a large clan living on the South Side. In those days, families enjoyed each other much more, and I can remember getting together two or three times a week for big family dinners or parties at the South Shore Country Club or weddings and wakes–young and old and very young and very old, all enjoying each other. It was wonderful, and from the time I was 10 I knew that I wanted to have my own saloon.”
But first he needed an education. ”I went to Morgan Park Military Academy,” he says, ”because that`s what Dad told me to do. He thought that the discipline would be good for me, and it was. You showed up for school at 7 every morning in full uniform, with shoes shined, and you sat erect for your lessons. I was a regular on the football team–I was 6 feet, 200 pounds and played tackle–and I boxed and was a shot-putter. Morgan Park took its football seriously, with summer camps and spring training, and it was good discipline. As for boxing, well, there were a few guys I could beat and a few guys who kicked the stuffings out of me. Grant Township High School in Antioch used to have a lot of big, strong farm kids who were rough, and (Providence-) St. Mel`s had a lot of tough little Italians, some of whom would later box for a living. Our coach was Johnny Coulon, who ran a gym and was a boxing legend. ”As a student, I was pretty lousy. I would later find out that I had dyslexia, a problem I discovered when it was diagnosed in my son. At the time, I just knew that it took me forever to read a book. My grades were desperately close to falling below a C, and I knew that Dad wanted me to go to college. So my last years I took a lot of courses in mechanical drawing, courses that I enjoyed, and made a few A`s. Still, I wasn`t real promising college material. Politics pulled me through. Morgan Park had a tremendous basketball player in those days named Tom Tiernan, and he was being heavily recruited by the U. of Michigan. In those days, the colleges were pretty dependent upon their alumni. Well, Dad got together with some of his pals from Michigan, and they worked out a package deal that the U. of Michigan couldn`t resist: The basketball team got Tiernan, but the College of Architectural Engineering had to accept me!
”Why did I study architectural engineering? Because my father told me to; that`s how things were done in our household. Dad never expected me to make great grades, but he demanded that I work hard. As for college, he only told me one thing: `Stay there!`
”His theory was that you don`t necessarily learn anything in college, but you do age, and that this is a good experience. Well, I think he`s right. ”I played a little football in college, but I was merely cannon fodder for the real players. The U. of Michigan was a pretty serious place in those days, and we worked hard. While in school, I always did part-time work
–delivery jobs in high school, sales jobs in college. In high school I had made enough money to buy my own sailboat and dock it at Burnham Harbor; in college I was making a fortune by selling Christmas cards.
”I had pledged Phi Gamma Delta, and my fraternity brothers and I would take a lot of weekend trips. We could always get a Driveaway Service car (free transportation in exchange for driving a car from one part of the country to another) for five days or so and drive to New York. The hotels weren`t so expensive then, and four or five of us would stay in a room at the Plaza. I used to love to go to the New York bars, especially P. J. Clarke`s. There were ad guys and sports guys and college kids, and everybody was nice and friendly. I`d return to campus feeling very enriched.”
The call came out of the blue: Mickey McGuire had died of a heart attack. He was only in his 40s. ”Heart disease is the curse of the male side of the McGuire family,” Butch says. ”I came home for the funeral and to comfort my mother, but I didn`t stay long. She had enough to worry about and she wanted me back at school. Did the death make me slow down? Obviously not! If anything, I wanted to cram as much as possible into a short period of time. But I had a good attitude. Hell, I even enjoyed the Army!”
Butch spent most of his two years in the service as a lifeguard in El Paso and as a designer of artillery ranges near Savannah, Ga. He was still selling the Christmas cards for Henri Fayette & Co., and he and his buddies would spend the weekends and vacations at getaway apartments in Juarez, Mexico and Daytona Beach, Fla. He ran a flourishing lending business–”loaning enlisted men and officers, oh, $10 or so for the weekend and collecting $12.50 in return.” He was mustered out of the service with a ”goodly amount” of money slung over his shoulder. Butch McGuire was ready for Chicago.
And in 1961 Chicago was ready for McGuire`s. Butch recalls: ”Some of my friends were telling me that since I threw such great parties, I should open a saloon. I enjoyed being an architect, but I really didn`t have the artist`s eye. I began to look for a location for my saloon.
”Old Town was hot then, with the `Old Town Pump` and the `Earl of Old Town` and `Chances R,` all folk-singing places, but I decided to gamble on Division, which was then considered one of the worst locations in Chicago. All I knew was that it was in the neighborhood, and my idea was to have a neighborhood saloon. My mother loaned me the money, and she made only one request–that I never take a partner. She felt that Dad had been burned by one of his associates. I decided to risk her money and try the saloon business for one year.”
A McGuire pal, attorney Mel Perretti, arranged the lease. ”When Butch told me his plans over coffee one day,” Perretti recalls, ”I told him, `Are you nuts? You`ll be your own biggest customer!` I negotiated a two-year lease with a three-year option for something like $750 a month for rent and fixtures –all of which had to be replaced. The place was a dump.”
The strip joint at 20 West Division, Bobby Farrell`s Show Lounge, had been open 24 hours a day. The building in which it was housed had been a speakeasy–”Kelly`s Pleasure Palace”–during the 1920s and one of the largest bookmaking joints in the country. The first person McGuire hired was a carpenter, and he notes, ”I`ve had at least one carpenter working on the place ever since.” The week before opening Butch held a big weekend party during the Old Town Art Fair and urged everybody to come to his saloon. He persuaded his stewardess friends to mail ads to everybody they knew. The people listened.
At about 4 p.m. on Friday, June 16, 1961, a nervous Butch McGuire and his two roommates stood inside their hole in the wall–the original barroom has only about 1,700 square feet, and the enormous curved bar seems to take up half that space–and began to rewrite social history. ”The bar jutted out into the room to accommodate the strippers` stage,” McGuire recalls, ”and I didn`t have the money to rebuild it. Still don`t. I had decided to serve nothing but draft beer–Old Style–because we didn`t have the cooling facilities for bottles. As it was, we had to persuade Lane Drugs (now Houlihan`s, another restaurant and bar) next door to let us store the beer kegs in their basement. We fixed the prices at 35 cents for an 8-ounce glass of draft beer, 65 cents for a mixed drink. My idea, right or wrong, was that for $1 a guy could buy a beer for himself and a mixed drink for his date. We didn`t have a cash register, and I had to make change from a cigar box. The front window was boarded up with plywood. We ran out of liquor, and I had to run west on Division to Parkway Liquors to restock. The beer foam washed through a drain on the floor down into a bucket in the basement. None of us knew the first thing about tending bar. People were standing elbow to elbow, and things were pretty chaotic.”
And the people loved it. One of the opening-nighters at McGuire`s, Gay Byrne, now a Chicago businesswoman, says, ”Butch`s secret is that he made you feel like you were in his living room, at a cocktail party with friends.”
McGuire`s Operating Manual
Subject: ”Female customers”
Young women play a major part in the success of our Establishment. Treat them with the utmost of respect and courtesy at all times!!!
The manual came a few years later, but Butch`s secret from the start was that he broke the taboo and made it respectable, even desirable, for single women to enter a saloon alone. The other half of this chicken-and-egg equation is that he hired as floormen and bartenders men who were graduate students or who had responsible full-time jobs and wanted to earn extra money. This type of employee left every year or so, but they were all bright, friendly, smiling, hard-working and serious about life. Not coincidentally, this type of man was exactly what a lot of women were looking for in a husband. Butch knew that the men would bring the women would bring the men because this was a simple–albeit revolutionary–step from the house parties Butch and his buddies had been running in their Old Town apartments.
One former regular, Chicago`s Kathy McCarron Hagstrom (now married to a friend of Butch`s, Dr. William Hagstrom), explains, ”Butch is a very secure man, and he gets along equally well with men and women. He expected you to treat his guests or customers with courtesy and politeness, and if you didn`t, you were out the door.”
Says Gay Byrne, ”A woman felt safe at Butch`s, safe from being hassled or `picked up` or having to play games. It was as if Uncle Butch were watching over you and you knew that nothing bad could happen. It enabled people to relax and open up and enjoy themselves, and this was exciting.”
Another first-nighter was Mary Anne Duffy, who now runs a model and talent agency in Houston. She says, ”Butch is about 30 percent businessman and 70 percent humanitarian. Butch`s whole attitude is this: `What can I do for you?` And it`s genuine; he`s not a glad-hander. You don`t make as many friends as Butch McGuire has by being a glad-hander. What kind of place was the early Butch`s? It was where everybody went.”
A third was Mary Jo Donovan, then a United stewardess from Albert Lea, Minn. She recalls, ”At the time, I was living with four other stewardesses in an apartment on Elm. I had met Butch at a saloon down the street called `Easy Street,` where he and Mel Perretti used to come all the time. I think that people were more frivolous back in the 1960s. We had less to worry about–and we did less worrying. The saloon started out as kind of an `Our Gang` type of place and caught on big. The secret, though, is that Butch was always there, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. For 25 years he has been in that saloon every day he has been in Chicago. He has put his customers ahead of himself and, often, ahead of his family.”
On July 4, 1963, Mary Jo Donovan and Butch McGuire were married. He still grouses, ”I`m the only man who had to build a saloon to win his wife.” Mary Jo recalls it differently: ”He was a wonderful, dear sweet man–and he always made me laugh.” Butch`s mother had warned him not to take a partner, but for the past 23 years Mary Jo McGuire has been just that–a full partner. Butch meets and greets; Mary Jo makes sure the bills and the help get paid. Their three children, Lauretta, 22, Robert Jr., 21, and Terrance, 19, have all worked in the saloon at one time or another. Observes Mary Jo, ”Butch has always been a demanding boss to work for, but I believe he was a little too demanding when it came to his own kids.” Butch calls their saloon experience a ”character builder.”
Last August all five McGuires stepped off the curb at West Division behind the Highland Rovers bagpipe band and led a parade from the saloon to a 25th-anniversary party at the Drake Hotel. Some 1,800 people, many of whom had met and married at McGuire`s, came, not only from Sandburg Village and Lake Shore Drive and the South Side but also from across the country, California and Florida and New York. They paid tribute (and $25 a head to benefit Santa Claus Anonymous) to the man whom one regular, Chicago`s Michael Rich, calls,
”The greatest party guy ever.” McGuire told the group, ”My parents always wanted me to be a priest. By building a saloon, I`ve developed quite a parish–good friends around the world.”
Subject: ”Courtesy”
Remember: The most-important part of your job is to be cheerful and warm to the customers. This atmosphere is what our company is based on.
1. Greet all people as they enter your area.
2. Ask if you may take their coats or packages.
3. Seat all girls immediately. If a gentleman is seated, ask if you may have his stool for a young lady. If necessary, explain that this is company policy.
4. If someone is passing through your area or standing without a drink in hand, politely ask if you can be of service. Always approach the customer. Never let him or her have to wait for you.
5. Do not mention these words: ”drinks,” ”liquor,” ”beer” or
”booze.”
6. Thank everyone you serve, whether for drinks or making change.
7. Thank and say ”good night” to anyone who appears to be leaving the saloon in your area.
8. Foul, belligerent or profane language among customers or fellow employees is not permitted and is grounds for removal from the premises.
