History
Located at 5, Rue Daunou, between the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Rue de la Paix in Paris, France, the bar was acquired by former American star jockey Tod Sloan in 1911, who converted it from a bistro and renamed it the "New York Bar." Sloan had gone partners with a New Yorker named Clancy (no one seems to know his first name) who owned a bar in Manhattan. That bar was dismantled and shipped to Paris. Sloan then hired Harry MacElhone, a barman from Dundee, Scotland, to run the place. At the time, American tourists and members of the artistic and literary communities were beginning to show up in Paris in ever-increasing numbers and Sloan hoped to capitalize on his fame and make the place a spot where expatriates would feel at home. His bar did become a popular spot for members of the American Field Service Ambulance Corps during World War I. However, financial problems from Sloan's overspending on a lavish personal lifestyle forced him to sell the bar, and in 1923 it was acquired by MacElhone, its former barman, who added his name to the bar, and who would be responsible for making it into a legendary Parisian landmark.
Read more about this topic: Harry's New York Bar
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)