NYC EATS

 “To be a saloon-keeper was to be illustrious.” – Mark Twain

If you lived in the 1800s and once, just once, had a drink mixed for you by “Professor” Jerry Thomas, you would probably remember it for the rest of your life. So flamboyant and entertaining was this magician of mixology that he left an indelible impression on everyone he met. 

He wasn’t the first bartender in New York. Orsamus Willard of the City Hotel holds that distinction. Other early bar-keepers include Cato Alexander, a freed slave who ran a coaching tavern in upper Manhattan.

But it was Jerry Thomas, “the Jupiter Olympus of the bar,” who invented the most drinks, set the style for serving them, and wrote the first book on how to mix them. His influence is felt to this day in every American tavern.

Thomas never stayed in one place for long. He was an itinerant sailor, gold miner, theatrical impresario, artist and art collector, gambler, and President of the Gourd Club, for which he grew the largest specimen. He tended bar in San Francisco, Denver, St. Louis, Chicago, New Orleans, Nevada, London and across Europe. But it was in New York City that he established his reputation as “Napoleon of Bar-Keepers,” and opened most of his saloons.

You have to remember that in the 19th century, American food, drink and hospitality were considered to be sub-standard when compared with European. “Mixing drinks was the first American culinary art,” says David Wondrich, author of Imbibe! “It was the first American cultural product to catch the world’s imagination.” Jerry Thomas had much to do with establishing this significant achievement.

Born in Sacketts Harbor, New York in 1830, his family soon moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where he became a bartender at age 16. He didn’t stay long; soon he sailed to Cuba, then rounded the horn of South America in the Antarctic winter of 1849, winding up in San Francisco in the middle of the Gold Rush. Many of the muddy tents and shacks in the new boom town actually contained gilded barrooms with chandeliers and billiard tables. Abandoning his gold-panning idea, Thomas set up bar and made a fortune.

But not for long. In 1851 he went into show business, organizing some of the first touring musicals in California, which became enormously popular. The next year he was back in New York, opening the Exchange bar on the ground floor of Barnum’s American Museum, the most famous attraction in the east, and the first of his four New York saloons. Then he was off again, tending bar across the country, always carrying his set of solid silver bar tools with him, sharing his expertise with anyone who was interested (earning him the nickname “Professor.”)  In 1858 he was back again in Gotham, as principal bartender of the fashionable Metropolitan Hotel on Prince Street and Broadway. Wherever Jerry went, he was the talk of the town.

Thomas was a consummate showman and dressed the part. He was always ablaze with diamonds on his shirt, cuffs and fingers, with a Parisian gold pocket watch dangling from a heavy gold chain, all adding to his elaborate, flashy performances. “The Professor’s” signature drink was the Blue Blazer: he would light whiskey on fire and pour it back and forth between two mixing glasses, creating a spectacular arc of blue flames to rounds of applause. At this point, Thomas was earning $100 a week, more than the Vice President of the United States. But he could never hold onto it.

Thomas, like so many other gents of his time, enjoyed “the sporting life,” owning race horses and betting on bare-knuckle prize fights. “Sports” never had jobs; they hung around in bars and gambling dens, maintaining a front of prosperity, despite going broke, then becoming rich, then broke again, sometimes in a single day. Sporting also meant adventure: in 1859 Thomas was scheduled to fly across the Atlantic in a massive 250-foot balloon, inflated with coal gas from the city’s mains. It never happened.

In 1860, after a couple of years at the Metropolitan, 30-year-old Thomas opened his own tavern at 622 Broadway. Soon hailed as “the finest drinking resort in America,” it was visited by the likes of composer Stephen Foster and Queen Victoria’s son Edward, Prince of Wales. The Prince, always surrounded by crowds, sneaked out of his hotel alone one night and was served Mint Juleps by the inimitable Thomas. He was found in the morning stumbling around downtown all by himself.

It was at 622 Broadway that Thomas began writing down drink recipes. Usually regarded as trade secrets shared orally within the bar-keeping fraternity, Thomas’ The Bar-Tenders Guide or How to Mix Drinks, was published in 1862, sold widely, and was updated frequently by the author. It hailed the beginning of the cocktail revolution; now anyone could mix a drink. One edition includes a recipe for the “Martinez,” which may be the precursor to the Martini.

In 1866, Thomas moved his bar to fashionable Fifth Avenue and 22nd Street, near Madison Square. Decorated with funhouse mirrors and drawings by the political cartoonist Thomas Nast, it became the most famous bar in America. For the first time, Jerry Thomas stayed put for awhile. He married in 1867 and fathered 2 children. He even joined the Masons.

Rent increases forced him to move once again, to 1239 Broadway at 30th Street, in the heart of the infamous Tenderloin. Known as “The Jerry Thomas Museum and Art Gallery,” it soon boasted a billiard room, bowling alley and shooting gallery to attract more customers. It was like a Chuck E. Cheese for booze hounds.

By 1876 Thomas was broke again, eventually having to sell off his beloved art collection. On December 14, 1885, he left work at the seedy Hotel Brighton on 42nd Street, went home, and dropped dead. He was 55 years old.

An astounding number of lengthy obituaries for Jerry Thomas appeared in newspapers around the world, celebrating his amazing life and contributions to the distinctly American culinary art of the mixed drink. If you’d like to pay your respects, he’s buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx...or you can just raise a toast to the Professor.

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