Last Friday, word started spreading that the iconic Irish pub Neary’s is closing after 57 years in business. After informing employees, the Neary family shared the news in a letter to customers, writing that the restaurant “holds countless cherished memories for our family, memories that we will forever hold dear,” and thanking staff, some of whom have worked there for decades. “Then it just spread like wildfire, as you could imagine,” says Una Neary, who took over the restaurant when her father, Jimmy Neary, died in 2021. At the restaurant, she has been telling customers nightly that Neary’s is going out like her father would want; it is not a bitter ending.
“We think it’s the right decision, the right time. I wanted to go out on top,” Una says. “Some people just don’t know when to hang it up and let it go when their time is up, as we all have seen, and we know.”
Una has spent her life at the restaurant, where she started working as a teenager. And even though she began a career on Wall Street 35 years ago, and made partner at Goldman Sachs in 2012, she continued to work at Neary’s part time: “For me, it’s just about knowing that my dad’s legacy and everything he built here is always going to be held in the highest regard. This street is co-named Jimmy Neary Way — like, it’s complete. Our story is complete, and I am at total peace with it.”
The Neary family has owned the building since the 1980s, and Una’s siblings approached her a few months ago about the prospect of selling it. It was a decision, she says, that she mulled over in St. Patrick’s Cathedral at a pew with her parents’ names, Jimmy and Eileen Neary, on it. Once she felt as though she’d gotten a sign, she let her siblings know she had found the right people. “What finally gave me the comfort to say, ‘Yes, now is the right time,’ was when I met these two gentlemen — they’re brothers — who bought the building. They’re restaurateurs. I didn’t want just anything going into this location.” (She said she couldn’t name them yet, because the restaurant hasn’t closed.)
Originally from County Sligo in Ireland, Jimmy Neary came to New York in the 1950s and, after serving in the military and bartending, opened his namesake pub in 1967. (He had a partner, Brian Mulligan, who died in the mid-’80s.) The astronaut John Glenn went during that first year, but Neary’s was just another one of the city’s many Irish pubs until, as New York Times reporter Alex Vadukul wrote in a 2021 obituary, then-Governor Hugh Carey started showing up. Other power players followed, and the restaurant’s list of influential customers eventually grew to include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was born and raised uptown; George Steinbrenner; cardinal Timothy M. Dolan; police commissioners Bill Bratton and Ray Kelly; journalists like Gay Talese and Jimmy Breslin; and several New York City mayors.
Former mayor Michael Bloomberg started going 40 years ago and had developed a close enough friendship with Jimmy that he spoke at his funeral.
Earlier this year, New York asked a handful of prominent characters in the city about their most cherished restaurants. In response, Bloomberg offered his thoughts on Neary’s:
“He had the gift of gab. No politician could work a room like Jimmy. In a city full of characters, he stood out. That’s why so many of us kept going back — and why we still go back, because he passed on that spirit to his daughter Una, who now runs it,” he told Ben Kesslen. When he was mayor, he shared, they’d always go on New Year’s Eve after dropping the ball in Times Square. “One year, Hillary Clinton was the special guest who pushed the crystal button that drops the ball. Afterward, she and Bill were saying their good-byes, and we said, ‘Come to Neary’s!’ And they did. We showed up, and I said, ‘Jimmy, we brought a couple of friends with us. Do you have any extra room?’ He was thrilled.”
People would go for Jimmy Neary, but they also went because of his employees. Some of those people had been at the restaurant practically forever. “Liz Farrelly, who we call Queen Elizabeth, she started here in June of 1967. She’s been here 57 years, and she’s here two nights a week,” Una says. One waitress, Noreen McIntyre, was with them for 45 years, commuting from Breezy Point. “Mary O’Connor, who I promoted to manager, she’s been here going on 46 years. I’m here 43 years.”
Bartender Kevin “Duffy” Philzone moved over to Neary’s after Elaine’s closed in May 2011, bringing along some of his regulars, including Times editor Peter Khoury. After Elaine Kaufman died in December 2010, the group would gather at Neary’s to remember her: “We did the reunion there on the anniversary of her death and then pretty much every year we’d do that,” Khoury says. “It kind of happened organically because Duffy went there; we went there. But then we got to meet Jimmy. We got to meet Una.” He adds, “Both Elaine and Jimmy created unique places with character that welcomed people in very different ways, obviously. And in this city, you rely on places like that to congregate: places that have character.”
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