Julia's: Where It All Started in 1936

The building at 73 Hamburg Street has been standing since around 1900, when it was built as a home on a corner of the Old First Ward that already knew something about hard work and harder winters. In 1936, two years after Prohibition finally ended, a woman named Julia Solarczyk walked into Buffalo City Hall and applied for a liquor license for a restaurant at 73 Hamburg Street. Neighbors would come to know the place simply as Julia's. Whatever Julia Solarczyk was building on that corner, it worked. Neighbors found their way to Hamburg and Republic and kept coming back.

Gene and Mary McCarthy: More Than Four Decades Behind the Bar

Gene McCarthy and his brothers bought the bar from Julia around 1963. Gene was the kind of owner who made a place belong to a neighborhood rather than the other way around. He worked his own bar. Pop in at lunchtime and you would find Gene behind the oak top. Mary McCarthy ran the kitchen. Between the two of them they kept the place running for more than 40 years.

The Old First Ward in those years was still very much the neighborhood that Irish immigrants had built working the Erie Canal, the grain elevators, and the lake freighters that made Buffalo one of the busiest inland ports in the country. Grain workers from the General Mills plant just blocks away. Firefighters from nearby houses. Police officers. Local politicians who knew exactly where to find their constituents. They all ended up on the same barstools.

Gene ran a social club out of the bar that took trips to Florida in the winter. The annual St. Patrick's Day parade ran right through the Ward, down Hamburg and Elk and South Streets, drawing thousands of people back to a neighborhood that shaped them. McCarthy's was always part of that fabric. It wasn't performing Irish-ness. It didn't need to. It was just a bar in the First Ward, which meant it had been the real thing since before anyone thought to put shamrocks on a sign.

When the breeze shifts off the Buffalo River in the right direction, the warm sweet smell of roasting oats from General Mills drifts through the block. It smells like Cheerios. It smells like the First Ward. It has smelled that way for as long as anyone can remember.

Gerhardt Yaskow: The Man Who Saved It in 2006

Gene McCarthy was 80 years old when he decided it was time. In early 2006, in a crowded ceremony at the bar, he handed the keys to a 34-year-old Allentown man named Gerhardt Yaskow. Yaskow was of Polish, German, and Ukrainian descent. He had grown up near the Broadway Market, where his grandparents had once owned a Polish tavern. He had been buying and restoring old homes around Buffalo and was part-owner of a Frank Lloyd Wright house.

Last winter Yaskow began poking around the Old First Ward, he later told the Buffalo News. Then he saw the For Sale sign in front of Gene McCarthy's Tavern and pushed open the heavy door. He took in the vintage wooden bar, the wainscotting, the tin ceiling, and fell in love on the spot.

It's not a bar, Yaskow said after buying it. It's a public house, where people don't go to get drunk, but to talk, to exchange ideas. He kept cook Patty Avent, who had already been working the kitchen for 25 years as of 2006. He commissioned a local artist named Lou Fisher to create stained glass images of the grain elevators at their industrial peak, which he installed in the windows where they still hang today. He had an old upright piano restored and moved in. He put in 50-hour weeks without complaint.

My generation, a lot of them complain and run, Yaskow told the Buffalo News. I've never been interested in living outside Buffalo. Look around. The grass is not greener. You can create anything you want.

Bill Metzger and the Brewery Next Door

In 2012, Bill Metzger and Matt Conron took over Gene McCarthy's. Bill was a Buffalo Music Hall of Fame member who had spent years running beer-focused events and programming at the bar. The previous owner told Bill that if he cared so much about where the place was headed, he ought to just buy it. Bill called that bluff.

Co-owner Kristin Rose described what they were running in a 2014 Buffalo Rising story: We're basically a community center with beer. That description had been accurate since 1963 and remained accurate after 2012. The goal was never to remake Gene McCarthy's. It was to add a chapter.

The chapter they added was a brewery. In 2013 they built Old First Ward Brewing Company in a freestanding building directly next door and ran glycol lines underground from the brewery straight to the tap system inside the pub. The first house beer flowed in 2014. They opened with three beers: Against the Grain, a hefeweizen; This is Not A Pale Ale; and H.O. Oats, an oatmeal stout. Head brewer Bryan Kirchmyer eventually developed more than 40 different recipes, working with traditional methods including proper lagering that takes six to twelve weeks of cold conditioning.

The floors still vibrate when a freight train rolls past on the tracks out front. The fish fry still draws a line on Fridays. The stained glass grain elevator windows Lou Fisher made still catch the afternoon light. The tin ceiling is still the tin ceiling. The oak bar top still carries the kind of wear that only comes from decades of elbows and glasses and late Friday afternoons.

Ronnie Zamerski: The Man in the Chair

Ronnie Zamerski was born on April 26, 1948. At some point in the early 1970s he found his way to 73 Hamburg Street and pulled up a barstool. He watched the bar change hands twice over the next five decades. He never left.

His drink was always the same. Blue Light with a dash of pepper. His game was always the Yankees. His hat was always the OFW. His spot was always the same spot at the bar, and he always had the same big grin when he settled into it. Staff knew to turn on the Yankees game when Ronnie was coming in. He called ahead to let them know. If Erin did not answer, he made sure to tell whoever picked up to pass the message along. Staff drove him home after his visits. He called in weekly weather reports just to stay connected.

In September 2013, Gene McCarthy's gave Ronnie his own reserved chair. A bar artist named Christina decorated the original with his name and the Yankees logo. In October 2016 they presented him with a new chair, styled like a baseball jersey with RONNIE 01 across the back and a Reserved Parking Yankees Fans Only sign underneath. Every April 26th the bar threw him a birthday party. The whole room showed up for Ronnie.

When the pandemic shut everything down in May 2020, Gene McCarthy's kept bringing Ronnie dinner every single evening and checking in on him. If you've been wondering how Ronnie's doing during this pandemic, the bar posted on Facebook, you'll be happy to know we're still bringing him dinner every evening and checking in to make sure he's all set. Let us know if you want to buy him a beer. Nearly 300 people reacted to that post.

Ronnie Zamerski passed away in May 2024. He was 75 years old. Gene McCarthy's posted a tribute on May 17th: We have lost a very near and dear friend. Ronnie Zamerski, a true staple to the bar and someone who very quickly became a part of our McCarthy family. He was loved by many. Customers always knew where to find him at his spot, in his chair, Blue Light with pepper, and the Yankees game on. We love you Ronnie.

Staff member Erin Kelleher wrote her own goodbye: Ronnie, it has been an absolute pleasure to have been apart of your life and serve you these last 10 years. You were someone who very quickly became like family. I'm going to miss driving you home and getting the weekly weather reports. I'm going to miss turning on the Yankee games for you and watching them with you. I hope you were greeted with an ice cold blue light with a dash of pepper. Rest peacefully my friend.

The Chair Is Still There

Over ninety years after Julia Solarczyk applied for her liquor license at 73 Hamburg Street, the corner of Hamburg and Republic is still exactly what it was always supposed to be. The building has outlasted Prohibition, the decline of the waterfront, the pandemic, and every force that has emptied out neighborhoods all over this country.

It has survived because people like Gene and Mary McCarthy gave more than 40 years of their lives to it. Because Gerhardt Yaskow pushed open a heavy door in 2006 and fell in love. Because Bill Metzger called someone's bluff and built a brewery next door. Because the First Ward keeps showing up.

Ronnie Zamerski's chair is still at the bar. It always will be. His name is still on it. The Yankees sign is still there. Nobody sits in it.

When you walk into Gene McCarthy's and the floors shake from a freight train and the whole room smells faintly like a Saturday morning and the stained glass catches the light and the oak bar top is worn down from a century of elbows, you are standing in the middle of ninety years of Buffalo showing up for itself.

Blue Light. Dash of pepper. Yankees on the TV.

That's 73 Hamburg Street. That's the Old First Ward. That's Gene McCarthy's.