Timothy Costello was born on September 5, 1895, in the townland of Ferbane, County Offaly, Ireland. The son of James and Teresa (Flynn) Costello. Tim’s parents owned a drapery shop. Tim had seven siblings: Mary, Julia, Maggie, Thomas, James, and Patrick, all older than he, and one younger brother, John Joseph. In 1901, his spinster maternal aunt Margaret Flynn also lived with the family. The family of eleven resided in the same dwelling as their shop, a building comprised of four rooms. One room presumably served as the shop, another for a kitchen, and two others likely were bedrooms.
Tim moved to Dublin at some point in the late teens or early 20s and found work as a taxi driver .He was arrested in 1922 and jailed for three months in Mountjoy Prison . His offence was listed as “driving a motor car on a public highway at a speed which was dangerous to the public”. Yes three months in jail for speeding. Ironically In 1922, the general speed limit for motor cars in Ireland (following the regulations inherited from the United Kingdom) was 20 miles per hour (mph). Tim was sentenced to serve three calendar months, to be released on February 1, 1923. He was also fined £10, which he paid when he was released.
In 1926 Tims brother John Joseph known as Joe emigrated. He arrived in New York on July 12th. At the time all arriving passengers had to disclose their contact person in the US. Joe listed Miss E. Egan as his cousin, address 315 east 84th street, NYC. The following year Tim followed his brother Joe to America arriving on the 19th of April and listing his contact in the US as his brother Joe at the same address 315 east 84th street.
On board the same ship along with Tim was 20 year old kathleen Gordon and her younger brother James from Ardvarney, County Leitrim, Kathleen had moved to Dublin in the Blackrock area at some point before immigrating to America, and she had saved enough money to purchase both tickets.
Tim and the Gordon siblings traveled in steerage, that part of the ship below the water line. This class was the least-expensive means of travel. It seems likely that Tim and Kathleen met while waiting in line to purchase tickets and then began their romance during the voyage. On January 6, 1933, when he petitioned for U.S. citizenship, he worked as a chauffeur. On the 1935 voter registration he is listed as a restaurant keeper on 701 third ave with his home address as 204 east 47th street. Its likely he opend the bar in 1934. It was a short walk from where he was living at the time to where the bar was located .
Tim married his sweetheart, Kathleen Gordon, in May 1937 in New Jersey. In 1940, the Costellos resided at 170 West 164th Street in the Bronx, a place they rented for $42 a month (about $775 today). Their first child James was a year old at the time .Their son Tim Jnr. was born in 1944 .Listed on the family headstone in Calvary Cemetery , Queens is a daughter Margaret who died as an infant in 1942 .
Prohibition in the United States, which banned the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages, lasted for nearly 14 years, from January 17, 1920, to December 5, 1933. It seems Tims timing to open a bar a year after prohibition ended was a wise move. The bar soon began to attract some well known artists,writers and newspaper men. In 1935, The New Yorker magazine moved its offices from West 45th Street to 25 west 42nd street . This iconic location served as their headquarters until 1991, during which time it became famous for hosting the editorial team. John Henry O’Hara became one of Tims patrons. He was one of America’s most prolific writers of short stories, credited with helping to invent The New Yorker magazine short story style. He became a best-selling novelist before the age of 30.
Another author John McNulty became close friends with Tim Costello and was a nightly visitor. The success of J. A. McNulty’s 1941 short story “Atheist Hit By A Truck” catapulted him into the national spotlight and cemented his reputation and further career path as an author rather than a journalist .
A fellow Irish man who relocated to the US in 1939 was also a regular in Costellos. Oliver St. John Gogarty (1878-1957) was an Irish physician, politician, and poet known for his contributions to literature and his vibrant social life. Born in Dublin, he was educated at various Jesuit schools before finding his passion at Clongowes Wood College and Trinity College, where he completed his medical studies in 1907. Gogarty’s literary journey began in earnest during his time at Oxford, but it was his connections with notable figures like William Butler Yeats and James Joyce that helped shape his reputation as a writer.
Gogarty became the first Senator of the Irish Free State in 1922. His life was marked by both professional achievements and personal trials, including an infamous incident in which he escaped kidnapping by Republican extremists.
Other well known patrons were Pulitzer prize winner Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway was an American journalist ,novelist, and short-story writer who revolutionized American literature with his direct and profound style. Also John Thurber who was an American cartoonist, writer, humorist, journalist, and playwright. As if one one pulitzer prize winner frequenting the bar wasnt enough another was John Steinbeck .Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception”.Tim knew these men and many more before and after they were famous.
At this time in New York the overground train ran along third avenue. Ground floor taverns and stores were literally in the shadow of the train tracks above. It was far from a swanky neghborhood at the time but Costellos became a magnet for the literary elite nonetheless. Costellos gained even more notoriety in stories written about it by John McNulty known as the bard of third avenue. He recounted stories and tales of the patrons and lifted Tim Costello and his bar to a legendary status for its readers.
In 1956 the over ground tracks were dismantled a few years later a group of business men called the third avenue boosters decided they wanted to give third ave some respectability. They suggested to rename third avenue, Avenue of the Promenades. When this news reached Tim Costello who was known as the Third Avenue Prime Minister he roared in defiance .”Third Ave it is and Third avenue it shall be forever more” The boosters surrendered to Costello and to this day its called 3rd Avenue .
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Irish playwright Brendan Behan became a celebrated celebrity in New York City,particularly following the 1960 Broadway success of his play The Hostage. He frequented Greenwich village bars like the White Horse Tavern and of course Costellos on Third Ave .
Tim was known for his collection of shillelaghs hanging up behind the bar .One of Tims stories concerned the day O’Hara came in and seen Hemingway at the bar . O’Hara handed Hemingway one of the shillelaghs and declared he did not believe the bearded one was strong enough to break it over his head .Costello continued “So this fellow Hemingway takes it and holds one end in each hand with the middle on his head and pulls down hard and-well you know it was probably 50 years old and brittle and he broke it” .”A kid could do it” the saloon keeper added with a smile .
Almost every article about Tim or Costello’s mentions the cartoon murals that James Thurber, writer and cartoonist for The New Yorker, drew on one of the saloon’s walls. Legend has it that Thurber drew them to settle his bar tab. Tim hired a painter to repaint the walls but forgot to tell him not to paint over Thurber’s cartoons. Thurber just redrew them. When Tim moved his restaurant and saloon next door, to 699 Third Avenue, Tim “ripped the wallboards off the walls and carried them to his new place.
At age 54, he made a trip back home to Ireland, leaving New York on July 13, 1950. Tim took with him his 12-year-old son, James.
Tim passed away in November 1962 .His brother Joe had died in May the same year. Tims wife Kathleen died in 1968. Its a measure of Tims success that his death at the time made the front page of the Boston Globe newspaper. The headlines in New York read “Tim Costello , fabled saloonkeepr will live in words and memories of newsmen and authors forever “. Another headline mentions “3rd ave. Loses its Loyal Pal ,Tim Costello“. A midland Tribune article in Ireland on Dec 1st 1962 reprinted the Boston Globe article on Tims passing.It also Mentions Tim had visited Ferbane in the summer of 1962 and spent some time at the County Arms Hotel in Birr. Its fitting he got to visit his home town of Ferbane one last time before his death .
Tim’s son, Tim Jr., took over the saloon when his father died in 1962, then sold it in 1992. After Tim Jr. sold the place, “the priceless Thurber cartoons mysteriously disappeared.” To this day, no one knows what became of them, but they are surely worth a fortune.
I want to Thank Sharon DeBartolo Carmack for permitting the use of her 2021 essay as my main source for this blog. The title of her essay “.How an Irish Barman Created a Home for New Yorks Literary Elite” . Link below .
Danny Leavy .
