Specialists in Selling, Renting or Leasing Bars, Commercial Interiors & Unusual Items

★We are always buying bars and fancy stained glass windows!★

RA618

$0.00

Description

30 ft Scottish back bar circa 1882.

The City Club Bar - It began life in 1882 in the lounge of the Great Northern railroad hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, where travelers sought refreshment after the long, dry ride from London. The bar was frequently graced by royals on their annual visits to Balmoral; Queen Victoria herself liked to drop in for a wee dram of single-malt whiskey. In 1905, it caught the attention of a traveling American, George Vanderbilt. He purchased it on the spot and shipped it to his Biltmore mansion in Asheville, North Carolina. But by the time it reached New York, Vanderbilt's extravagance had forced him to leave Biltmore, so the bar (and the single-malt) went into storage in a warehouse in New York. 

Legend has it that once, on a dare, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald Black Bottomed the entire length of the bar without breaking a single glass. Ernest Hemingway wrote several sentences there. Marlene Dietrich perched on the bar to sing "Falling in Love Again." Norman Mailer and Mickey Mantle arm wrestled for the tab. After a new bartender refused service to Frank Sinatra, his influential friends closed down the place and had the bar shipped to Cicero, Illinois. 

We found it there last year in a YWCA snack bar. And in the process of scraping off the layers of pink and aqua paint, a secret compartment was discovered -- containing the missing single-malt whiskey. 

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