Bridge Café – Gallus Mag's Hole-in-the-Wall

New York · United States · Pub

Gallus Mag bit the ears off unruly patrons and kept them pickled in a jar behind the bar – in the little red house on Water Street, the waterfront's most fearsome woman is said to stand guard still.

The small red wooden house of 1794 at 279 Water Street once held the Hole-in-the-Wall, among the most notorious sailors' dives of the 19th-century waterfront beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Order was kept by Gallus Mag, a nearly six-foot Englishwoman with a pistol in her belt and a club in her fist. Legend holds she ended brawls by biting off the loser's ear and dropping it into a pickling jar behind the bar – her personal trophy case. The building later became the Bridge Café, New York's oldest drinking establishment until Hurricane Sandy flooded it in 2012. Staff told of footsteps upstairs, flying bottles and a massive female silhouette on the stairs. Mag, they say, still tolerates no trouble in her house.

FAQ

Where is Bridge Café – Gallus Mag's Hole-in-the-Wall located?

Bridge Café – Gallus Mag's Hole-in-the-Wall is in New York, United States.

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Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

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