Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: pub

Chicago’s "MDA Building" is one of those downtown buildings few have heard of but that has its own interesting history. Designed by Daniel Burnham, Jr. and completed in 1927, it’s 24 floors, 290-feet high. Originally known as the Medical and Dental Arts Building, it was home to both the Chicago Dental Society and the Chicago Medical Society, as well as a larger roster of doctors and dentists. In October of 1939, it was the site of the first meeting of the Chicago chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Their 1940 New Year’s Eve party was noted as featuring a "large assortment of sobered up piano players." The Chicago Literary Club, founded in 1874, moved to the 22nd floor as a cheaper alternative to their previous lodgings in the Fine Arts Building, and the same floor was the site of 10 cent lectures sponsored by the Marxist publication The New Masses in the 1930’s. In 1929, the Tribune reported that Mrs. Benjamin Baskin gave birth to a baby boy in one of the elevators. Hopefully, the building’s large population of doctors included least one obstetrician. Over time, the structure evolved into a more traditional office building, and was known for the rather ugly paint job on its top floor facades. In 2003, the building, renamed MDA City Apartments, underwent a $45 million upgrade by Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture that saw the offices converted to 190 luxury rental units, with an outlet of the Elephant and Castle restaurant chain on the first floor of the limestone clad base, which also includes an Artisan Pastoral Cheese Shop.

One of the oldest pubs in London, the Lamb & Flag was once known as the Bucket of Blood, thanks to the bare-knuckle fights held here. It was a favourite watering hole of Charles Dickens. As you step inside the narrow pub which habitually bursts at the seams with hoards of local workers and shoppers – it’s easy to imagine a time when this place was filled with London’s rowdy residents jostling for space at the bar or packing out the ancient settles. A noticeable lack of chairs and tables downstairs results in drinkers thronging in front of the bar or squeezing into nooks and crannies much like they would have done when it was first opened. If you want a bit of space, fight your way through and wind your way up the creaking staircase to a larger roomier upstairs bar named the Dryden Bar, after the poet, John Dryden, who was allegedly "nearly done to death" in the alleyway next to the pub. The incident happened late at night on 18 December, 1679 when Dryden was returning from Will’s Coffee House in Bow Street to his lodgings in long Acre. As today, Rose Street was a dark and secluded place. It is thought that the assault by three men was paid for by the earl of Rochester, who believed that Dryden had satirized him in a recent publication. However, a painted plaque in the narrow passageway next to the Lamb and Flag suggests that the instigator of the attack was the duchess of Portsmouth. Be that as it may, the culprits were never caught, despite the offer of a £50 reward (a considerable sum in those days).

This imposing four-storey structure houses the Rising Sun, a public house at 46 Tottenham Court Road, Fitzrovia, London. This pub was established in 1730 and most recently re-built in 1897 in Art Nouveau Gothic style by two much admired Victorian architects Leonard Martin (1869-1935) and Henry John Treadwell (1861-1910). The Rising Sun is said to be their masterpiece. It is an elaborate building with classical pilasters framing the second floor windows, a high parapet and a three-bayed return facade to Windmill Street. It sports delicate mouldings, heraldic beasts, rising suns, decorative gables, and an elegant bartizan. (A bartizan is an overhanging turret.) In the early 1980’s, the owners of the day made a bizarre decision. They changed its name to The Presley, lowered the ceiling by about two yards, anointed it with pictures of Elvis and turned it into a rock 'n' roll bozo. It was an eccentric interlude which the next owners, Scottish and Newcastle, speedily put behind them. It is now The Rising Sun again, or almost. The extravagant Victorian interior is irretrievably gone. It is now what they call an Ale House: bare boards, real ales and speedy pies. The facade, though, has been meticulously restored. So good news from this generally ill-favoured thoroughfare. Outside, a minor masterpiece rescued. Inside, well, at least the ceiling is back where it belongs. It is a Grade II listed building with English Heritage.

Cheers Beacon Hill, formerly the Bull & Finch Pub, is a bar and restaurant located on Beacon Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, across from the Boston Public Garden. Founded in 1969 as the Bull & Finch Pub, the bar is known internationally as the exterior of the bar seen in the NBC television sitcom Cheers which ran from 1982 to 1993. The show used the Bull & Finch exterior for the series’ establishing shots of the namesake bar Cheers. No interior shots were used, and the interior does not resemble that of the Cheers bar. In 2002, the Bull & Finch Pub was officially renamed "Cheers Beacon Hill". On March 10, 2009, the Boston Globe reported that longtime Cheers bartender Eddie Doyle, with a 35-year tenure that predated the sitcom Cheers, had been laid off. Owner Tom Kershaw cited the recession as the reason for the decision. The block on which Cheers resides has been renamed Eddie Doyle square in his honor.

The Native American warrior statue in "Cheers" was a statue of Tecumseh. It was featured prominently in episode 189 of season 8 in 1990, Bar Wars III: The Return of Tecumseh. In it, Rebecca would like nothing better than to end the long-standing feud between the Cheers gang and their arch-rivals at Gary's Olde Towne Tap. But this proves impossible when it seems that someone at Gary's has stolen Cheers' beloved statue. The war escalates throughout the episode, with a surprising twist at the finale.

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Another photo from the "somewhat weak on the concept" department. Ah, so much treif and so little time!

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