Last Call at McHale's: Broadway Says Goodbye to a Favored Neighborhood Joint

The neon green sign that read "McHale's" looked like it could be on a small town bar anywhere in the country, but instead it illuminated the corner of 46th Street and 8th Avenue in the giant city of New York. Inside the establishment that it promoted a visitor found a suitably dark watering hole, something straight out of an old detective story.

"It's a Broadway institution," Matthew Broderick, starring a block away in The Odd Couple, said while having a recent post-show drink at the establishment. Sweeney Todd star Patti LuPone liked the place so much she is immortalizing it in the art for her upcoming Ghostlight Records recording The Lady With The Torch to be released April 25—the cover and inside of the CD booklet will be filled with pictures of LuPone at the pub. "It's a working class bar," LuPone explained to Broadway.com on the chilly Tuesday night of her photo shoot. "And we are all working class stiffs, however much we pretend to be something else. This is a home."

Sadly, McHale's does not house anyone any longer—it closed its doors for good on January 16. The building that it is a part of which also includes some off-off-Broadway theaters and a dance studio, among other businesses will soon be torn down to make way for a 42-story condominium development.

You Wanna Go Where People Know,
People Are All The Same
McHale's was known for its great burgers and laid back atmosphere. At one point called "the stagehands bar" among community members, in the last decade or so, its loyal following grew to include a host of others. On any given night, one could find behind-the-scenes theater personnel, actors of all levels and some locals plus possibly a wise tourist or two enjoying the joint.

"For years I've come here every Tuesday night for chicken wings after a show," Dirty Rotten Scoundrels dancer Rachelle Rak commented while spending a final night at the bar. "They know me—I walk in, I have a shot of Patron, a beer and chicken wings with sauce on the side. That's it."

Another Dirty Rotten Scoundrels cast member, Roxane Barlow, added: "It's always been a good burger place. It's where we all come. There is always someone you know here."

Indeed, everything about the venue said that it was a local hang—there was a plaque from the New York stagehand's division, Local One, behind the bar, the wait staff many of whom were aspiring actors wore gray t-shirts with the McHale's logo, credit cards were not accepted and everything was fairly cheap by midtown standards.

"We always handled everyone the same," Christine, one of the bartenders, said. "One night I was managing and it was slamming busy. A guy comes up to me and asks for a table and I took his name—it was Jerry Zaks. And I still said to him 'It's going to be about 30 minutes.'"

You Wanna Be Where You Can See,
Our Troubles Are All The Same
There is some friendly debate over who came up with the idea to shoot the photos for The Lady With The Torch inside McHale's Ghostlight's Kurt Deutsch and Noah Cornman and Scott Wittman, who conceived and directed LuPone's The Lady With The Torch concerts, all take credit for it, but one thing is sure—LuPone was immediately sold. "The idea is that the woman in the photos is a lonely woman on any street in any city in the world," she explained during the shoot. "This is a bar where you're going to find a lonely woman. It's sort of perfect."

"When I didn't have money I came here a lot," Wittman laughed while watching LuPone. "It was the perfect place to do this shoot because a lot of the songs she sings are sad ballads about being in New York and alone and [McHale's has] the perfect atmosphere for a torch song kind of place."

LuPone, dressed in a tailored trench coat, took photos at the bar and sitting inside a booth; she posed with a glass of wine and a hamburger. The pictures will be an ideal tribute to the place where they were taken.

Making Your Way In The World Today
Takes Everything You've Got
Before McHale's shuttered, Broadway had already suffered the recent loss of two local eateries—Howard Johnson's and JR's closed over the summer. "When you don't own your building, and you're in an old building in a prime location, this is probably what is going to happen," owner Jimmy McHale, whose father and uncle bought the venue in 1953, said. "It becomes more valuable torn down and rebuilt then existing here. There is nothing we can do to stop it." In the next year, McHale noted, both Barrymore's and Frankie and Johnnie's, two other well-known midtown eateries, will also be shut down: "There are no restrictions on the zoning and how people can build. It's catching up to these older places."

"You always expect things to be here forever and they are really not," Broadway make-up artist Justen M. Brosnan, who came to McHale's on one of his first nights in New York in 1994, stated. "There is this great community of theater people that exist in these bars—and it's just getting smaller and smaller."

"These places are very important [to the community] and sadly they're disappearing," LuPone said. "It's not good. It's not individual. But nothing shocks me anymore about the city. I don't know what's going on here."

Where Everybody Knows Your Name
When all the midtown bars are gone, the area will be a combination of national chain restaurants and upper-scale eateries. "I don't know where all of the community will go," Broderick voiced. "Bennigan's is not the same feeling. New York is over. It's very sad. Why is it happening? Does the neighborhood need another high rise?"

"The only institution that will be left is the Edison and people don't go there at night," Barlow chimed in. "You go there for Matzoh ball soup—not to get a beer!"

Some regulars, like Rak, crammed as many nights at McHale's as possible before the last drink was served. Once she heard about the closing, she began to come three times a week, instead of her traditional one.

Sorry, We're Closed
McHale found out the building was sold in August and quickly began looking for another space, but has not found one to his liking. There is going to be space for a restaurant once the condo building goes up and McHale has been talking to the landlords about rebuilding in this location. "Of course we don't know what the rent will be like, we don't know what the conditions will be," he said. "Will I be able to keep my prices like I've always tried to? We'll see what we're offered."

Even if he does re-build in the same spot, the place will be somewhat different. McHale's as we all know it is now gone. "Why didn't they choose to preserve this?," questioned LuPone as she sipped her parting drink. "Don't they think the people inside the sky rise would want to have a bar? Why not preserve the history? This place is a social history of this city; they're obliterating it, these idiots that are putting up the high-rise."

Whatever the thoughts of the community that loved it, the famous green sign has been permanently shut off. While McHale is putting some of the restaurant's insides in storage, he joked that the sign was only held together by duck tape and would shortly fall to the ground, even if the wrecking ball never came.

"The outside is really not what this is about," McHale concluded. "What this place has meant to a lot of people is stability—in a town where you need something like that. I feel sad for those people, but it's hard to stop things when they start changing."