The American bar since 1860

 The American Bar has sat, robustly nestled on the corner of Dock Street since 1860. Details are scarce - the people that frequented the then American Hotel, back when Sailortown was awash with seafarers, dockers, carters and riveters, all hard, callused men, with torn hands and bruised shoulders, have long gone and with them the facts and definitive figures, that would let us do more than simply speculate as to when and why it was that the bar came to be called The American.

There are many estimations and stories, we’ve heard every conceivable theory and hypothesis, all divulged with solid conviction, from a host of characters who’ve darkened our door and announced how they’ve “not set foot in here for… jesus, 50 years at least,” but the one we like most, is the one we feels fits best. 

So it goes, that there was The Rotterdam on the dock where the trade ferries left for Europe, and there was the Liverpool Bar, where you could hop on a boat and skip across the Irish Sea, and there was, of course, The American - where, having made the decision and said goodbye, you could buy your ticket in the bar, sink a final pint of Irish stout, wipe a tear from your eye and board the ship to New York. 

Sailortown changed. And the good old days passed. The area which had housed a somewhat unsegregated population, with the Catholic and Protestant working class sharing a space of work and home, saw the beginning of its demolition in the 1960s to make way for the M2 Motorway; a concrete monstrosity that heralded the beginning of the end of a feisty, spirited place where people worked and played and lived and, as we are reminded still today, built the history that is mass marketed to the tourists who come here to be shuffled off to see the place where the big ship that sank was constructed. The last terrace house in a once vibrant and alive Sailortown was knocked down in the 1970s. 

From the mid 1980s the Rotterdam Bar carved out an iconic reputation for live music, with Chris Roddy continuing that tradition today with his Saturday Afternoon Club every Saturday and Sunday in the American Bar featuring many of the bands and rockers that would have featured in The Rotterdams heyday. 

O’Reilly and Savage took ownership of the American during the 1960s and Sean Savage, after a 30 year stint behind the bar, left it in the hands of the Lindsey family. It changed hands again and was under the stewardship of The Carr brothers, before closing for a period in 2010. 

In 2016, renowned publican Pedro Donald took the bar over and breathed new life into it and its then sister bar The Sunflower, navigating the upheaval of a pandemic whilst keeping the doors open and his team employed and intact. Justin Nicholl and Elena Martin of The Grateful Bread, began trading from the kitchen in late 2021, offering, (without doubt or bias) the very best pub grub in the city. Pedro retired in 2024 and since then, The American has been owned by Tómas Gorman and Peter McCloskey… They are supported by, as anyone who visits can testify, the very best rabble of barstaff in all of Belfast.

But no one person ever really owns a bar. They are custodians at best. There may be a name on a deed, or one scrawled above the door, but a bar is rarely owned by anyone but the people that choose to inhabit it. This is a community bar in a place where community was taken away. But there will, like always, be community in a place where people choose to congregate, to revel and relax. It’s a dockers bar, a sailors bar. A bar for artists and musicians, for weirdos and outcasts, for the workers and protesters, for poets and dog walkers.

 All are welcome. 

Come. Eat well. Drink well. Good vibes only.

Le Gra. 

The American