From its vantage point at the historic intersection of 173rd Place and Oak Park Avenue, Teehan’s Tavern looks back on Tinley Park’s past and ahead into the future.
Like the village that is its home, the building at 17329 S. Oak Park Ave. has gone through a series of changes, said Brad Bettenhausen, president of the Tinley Park Historical Society and village treasurer.
The first business on the site was built in 1852 and called the Pacific Hotel, reflecting the owner’s hope that the nearby railroad line would ultimately extend to the Pacific Ocean, Bettenhausen said. The hotel had rooms on the second floor and a saloon on the first, and hotel names changed as the property changed hands, although the site was briefly the home of a farm machinery business.
But for most of the last 150 years, the building has been a pub.
Regis Teehan is the third generation of her family to run the neighborhood saloon since her great-grandfather Pete Parenti, who had owned a chain of ice cream shops, bought the business in 1917.
When Parenti bought the building from Hank Boldt, Tinley Park was a dusty farm town populated mostly by German immigrants.
“People spoke German, and signs were in German,” said Harold Teehan Jr., Regis’ father. Harold Teehan’s father, Harold Sr., married Parenti’s daughter, Marie. “My grandfather was the only guy around here who wasn’t German.”
When Harold Teehan Jr. was a boy, there was a blacksmith shop in town, an enterprise the youngster found upsetting. “I told my mother they were hurting the horses,” he said.
“We used to play baseball in the street out there, and now you take your life in your hands to cross it,” he said.
Renovation brings past back
The steady stream of traffic cruising down Oak Park Avenue marks a definite change in the outdoor ambience, but a recent historic project restored the building’s old-fashioned look, and memories are preserved indoors as well.
Hanging on the wall is a photo of the tavern interior in the 1920s. The photo depicts Pete Parenti wearing a fedora and sitting next to a slot machine. The counter at which he sold candy and cigarettes and the potbelly stove that heated the room also are visible.
A look upward yields another glimpse into the past.
During a recent remodeling project, the tavern’s original zinc and tin ceiling was uncovered, patched and painted. The ceiling is stamped with an ornate design of medallions with curving borders.
Vintage signs on the wall caution patrons to “Beware Pickpockets and Loose Women” and urge them to “Repeal the 18th Amendment for Prosperity.”
The style of the outdoor sign designed by Regis Teehan reflects the family’s Irish heritage. So does the collection of leprechaun figures on shelves along the walls, where a couple of Irish-theme posters hang.
A new sign bearing a Gaelic message that translates as “There’s nothing too good for the Irish” hangs over the mirror behind the bar.
“My father would say that all the time,” Harold Teehan said. The expression was often applied to Sunday dinner, he said. “Regis said we should have something to remember her grandfather.”
Running great-grandfather’s and grandfather’s tavern hadn’t figured in the career plans of either Regis Teehan or her father.
“Nobody was really groomed to be a bartender,” said Regis Teehan, who received a bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a certificate in art therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Learning at the bar
She took a bartending job while she was enrolled at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and working at the University of Chicago Hospitals as an art therapist.
“I had no time to socialize,” she said. Bartending “was a way to sort of be at the party without getting in any trouble.”
She decided to leave the psychology program, and she signed on for the family business in 1989. Her father was considering retirement, and her brother wanted to concentrate on another family enterprise.
“I sort of wanted a life change,” she said.
When Harold Teehan got out of the U.S. Army after World War II, he enrolled at the U. of I. to study for a business degree. He was drawn into the family business after he got his degree.
After his father died in 1950, he started helping his mother with the bar.
“She wasn’t able to do it by herself,” he said.
Soon he started putting his business knowledge to use. He opened two liquor stores, which he later sold, and the ice company next to the tavern, which is now run by his son, Harold Teehan III.
Harold Teehan Jr. “has always been kind of an entrepreneur,” Regis Teehan said. “He had the dry cleaning concession in his fraternity.”
He added some bells and whistles, including music, to the tavern. “We had a big old pipe organ,” he said. Bands of different types, including country music and swing, made periodic appearances. He sponsored bus trips to sports events and started serving food. “We had the first pizza in Tinley Park,” Harold Teehan said.
Teehan’s Tavern also was the first Tinley Park bar to add a television set and the first to install air conditioning, Harold Teehan said.
Live music is still brought in on special occasions, Regis Teehan said, but not on the day one would expect. “We’re so busy on St. Patrick’s Day itself, we don’t have room for a band,” she said.
Socializing never ends
Sociability is the best aspect of the bar business, Harold Teehan said. “You meet a lot of really nice people,” he said. “You make great friends. You come in here, it’s like your living room. One of the down things is the hours. The hours are murderous.”
Regis Teehan said: “It’s like entertaining seven nights a week. It’s kind of a way of life, like growing up in the circus.”
One advantage of owning a business is setting your own hours, and now that Regis Teehan has two daughters, ages 9 and 7, she sticks with the day shift. After she picks the girls up from school at 3:30 p.m., “I turn it over to the staff,” she said. “They’ve been there a long time. I have a very good staff.”
Like Tinley Park, Teehan’s Tavern has evolved, but it’s still a friendly, family-oriented place. “People say, `I used to come here with my grandfather,'” Regis Teehan said. “People will come in and say they remember me when I was a kid. People you remember sitting down having a Coke with their dad are now coming in and having a drink.”
Customers’ ages span the generations. There are the daytime crowd of retirees, the after-work crowd and at night “we get the kids,” she said.
Bartender Sue Johnson of Tinley Park likes the camaraderie of the close-knit customers. “I like the day crowd,” said Johnson, who has worked at Teehan’s for seven years. “It’s like `Cheers.'”
“I’ve been drinking here since I was an apprentice bricklayer 30 years ago,” said Art Truszkowski of Olympia Fields. “We watch the sports.”
“It’s one of the greatest neighborhood bars I’ve ever been in,” said Mike of Richton Park. “No last name–it’s friendlier that way. The Teehans are a great family. It has that neighborhood bar feeling.”
Todd O’Connell of Tinley Park and David Thetford of Frankfort stop in after work daily to play darts.
“This is happy magic land,” Thetford said. “It’s just got a great local bar feel. Everybody gets along.”
“The bartenders are real nice,” O’Connell said. “We know the family. It’s comfortable. It’s safe.”
