Far from the neighborhood where they once played hosts to millions of thirsty people, Mary Jo and Butch McGuire stared from the wall of a new Lincoln Avenue saloon when I walked in one recent early evening.
If you think there is something wrong with walking into a saloon on an early evening, read what Chicago-born Raymond Chandler wrote in “The Long Goodbye”: “I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar — that’s wonderful.”
And so it was at Mary Jo McGuire’s, a recent resident on the busy 2200 block of North Lincoln Avenue. The photo on the wall is the work of the late and great photographer Victor Skrebneski, and it was placed in its prominent spot by the saloon’s owners, a pair of busy brothers named Conor and Patrick Stewart, two of the seven grandchildren of Mary Jo and her husband Butch.
Perhaps you have heard of Butch McGuire? His is one of the city’s best and most influential saloons, in business at 20 W. Division St. since 1961. That was when Chicago-born, Beverly-raised Robert Emmett “Butch” McGuire borrowed $500-some from his mom and bought an unsavory bar named Bobby Farrell’s Sho Lounge, cleaned it up a bit and opened his eponymous saloon.
It was immediately popular, in part because of Butch’s compelling personality, the food when it began to serve it, and the fact that he began the then-innovative move of reserving barstools for unaccompanied women and having the staff watch over them protectively. One of those was flight attendant Mary Jo Donovan, who walked in in 1963, grabbed a seat and two years later married the owner.
They were terrific together, she mostly in the shadows of her husband’s outsized nature, but operating as a team. Not only did Butch’s claim to have invented the Harvey Wallbanger and the Skip and Go Naked, it colorfully exploded around Christmas time with custom-made mobiles hanging from the ceiling, toy soldiers, gingerbread men, elves and other seasonal attractions, including model trains. It also claimed, without much argument, to have invented the concept of “singles bar,” backing that up by citing the thousands of marriages seeded at the saloon. In the late 1960s, they opened another Butch McGuire’s at 300 E. Rand Road in Mt. Prospect. A massive place, it lasted into the early 1980s.
Somehow, amid all this activity, Butch and Mary Jo found time to have three children, Bobby, Terrence and Lauretta, the last of whom married Bruce Stewart, moved east and started their own family, which includes Patrick, Conor, Riley and Cate.
The Stewart brothers knew their grandparents and their saloon — “from our earliest memories,” says Conor — and even though growing up on the East Coast still made frequent trips here during summers and on holidays. By their teen years, they were working as busboys in the saloon.
“It’s always been a part of us,” says Patrick.
After college, the brothers explored the business world. Soon enough, they were bored and the idea of a tavern to call their own started to sprout. Butch had died in 2006 and Mary Jo in 2021, by which time the brothers had broached the idea to their uncle Bobby.
He was enthusiastic, and also talked of some of the difficulties and hurdles of the tavern business. The brothers began exploring sites across the city.
“We wandered the Gold Coast, the Fulton Market district, all over,” says Connor.
They arrived at the 2200 block of North Lincoln and discovered an area with a strong liquor legacy. I am sure many of you remember such spots as John Barleycorn, with its collection of miniature ships, movies showing, classical music playing and fine hamburgers; Oxford Pub, with its 4 a.m. closing and the attendant over-served antics; Read Barron, with a great juke box and notorious past; 2350 Pub, more restaurant than bar; Wise Fools, one of the best blues bars in the city; Sterch’s, a place of great character and characters.
They found their home in what had been T.A.P. House, noted for its pizza, tacos and booze.
“We knew this would be right,” says Patrick.
Their menu is a solid reflection of that at Butch’s but they claim, says Patrick, “that our pizza may be a bit better because we sort of inherited the pizza ovens from the last place.”
Both of these men (Conor is 29 and Patrick, Conor tells me, “is 31 but was 30 when we opened in October, same age as Butch when he opened on Division Street”) have the family work ethic and tell me they are at Mary Jo’s every day. They tell me they feel the presence of their grandparents.
I knew Butch and Mary Jo and am grateful for their sharing their affection for the city with me. Bobby has always been a pleasant and charming straight-shooter. This third generation shares many family qualities.
Inspired in part by the musical shadow cast by Wise Fools, they have a second-floor space for music on the weekends, able to handle crowds of 250 or so.
They also tell me they spent, Conor says, “more than a year driving to more than a dozen states, from barns to hidden antique dealers, all sorts of backroads looking for the sort of historical items that could bring warmth to this space.”
They did a fine job. The place is warm and welcoming. They have 70-some employees and say that business since opening has been solid and steady. They do admit that running a saloon is vastly different from the 9-to-5 worlds they abandoned.
“Yes,” says Conor. “But this is ours and sharing it is rewarding.”
They do have non-tavern lives. Conor is engaged to Mary Eleanor O’Meara, who he met while working at Butch’s some time ago and who is pursuing a doctorate in psychology. Patrick is married to Kristin, a Northwestern Hospital nurse. As if on cue, as afternoon moves into night, in she walks. With her is her future sister-in-law Mary Eleanor and with them, in a handsome stroller, is 5-month-old Raegan, Patrick’s and Kristin’s baby daughter. She is smiling.
This was, I am told, not her first visit to the family business.
It will certainly not be the last.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
