Eddie Brennan This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Eddie Brennan on waterfront, White Horse, Dylan Thomas

   www.thevillager.com/villager_1 - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/30/2005   Last Visited: 12/30/2005

   Eddie Brennan on waterfront, White Horse, Dylan Thomas
   ...
   Eddie Brennan, owner of the White Horse Tavern on Hudson St., in front of a portrait of the bar's most famous former patron, Dylan Thomas, near the table at which the Welsh poet used to sit.
   
   Several decades ago , before there were chic restaurants and multimillion- dollar condos lining the waterfront along West St. , the far West Village was an ethnic neighborhood filled with Irish families, longshoremen who worked on the nearby piers and working-men's bars that were reasonably priced and unpretentious. This was the neighborhood that Eddie Brennan grew up in. Brennan was a longshoreman, a restaurant worker and a construction worker and later on became the owner of one of the most legendary bars in Greenwich Village, the White Horse Tavern. Along the way, he met and hung out with some of the more famous writers and poets of the Village.
   
   "I was born in St. Vincent's hospital on 11th St. in 1935," he said.
   ...
   Brennan went to St. Veronica's School (now the Village Community School) on 10th St. between Greenwich and Washing-ton Sts. It was a large Catholic school with the church abutting the back on Christopher St. The school was mostly Irish because at that time the Italian part of the Village was on the other side of Seventh Ave., a kind of boundary line. The Irish area extended from that borderline through where the White Horse now sits at Hudson and 11th Sts. and right up to Hell's Kitchen.
   
   "I left school pretty young and I went to work on the ships, on the docks. At the time I was working there Daniel Patrick Moynihan [who later became a New York senator] was working on Pier 48. I was 15, and he was in college," Brennan recalled. "He used to drink in here," he said gesturing around the White Horse. "And then he became a friend of mine years later when I bought the place."
   
   The work on the piers may have been tough but Brennan was a pretty tough kid.
   
   "It was hard work," he said, "but the really hard work was the winter.
   ...
   "Those old Irish hull men , they were mainly Irish and Polish , they were very talented laborers," Brennan continued.
   ...
   Brennan worked on the docks for 11 years until an injury in 1960 forced him to try other work. The restaurant business seemed like a natural for him because his father was part owner in the West Side Shore Bar and Grill, a pub on West St. that catered to the longshoreman. As a kid he used to hang out there just to be near his father.
   
   "I liked being around the guys. That was always fun. But you know, it was another world," he recalled. "Good men. They did what they could to make a dollar in those days. And they went to work on the docks. It was a good living. That was all union."
   
   Brennan took on a series of jobs, including restaurant work, steam fitting and construction.
   
   "And then I was getting married so I got back into the restaurant business," he said.
   ...
   In all his years of hanging out in and finally owning the White Horse Tavern, Brennan has met scores of interesting people. Long before he owned the place, when he was still working on the piers, Brennan hung out at the legendary watering hole, and although he didn't realize it at the time, he was often a drinking buddy of the saloon's most famous patron.
   
   "I was sitting here and I was drinking with this guy. Someone said, 'Do you know who that is?' I said no. They said, 'That's Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet,' " Brennan remembered.
   ...
   After Brennan had owned the White Horse for a few years he began to realize how famous Dylan Thomas really was and how much people associated the bar with his name.
   
   " I saw people who came back and were always asking about Dylan Thomas and then I found out what a highly respected writer and poet he was," he said.
   ...
   But the Dylan Thomas aficionado who most touched Brennan was a young Texan who arrived at the bar one night when Brennan had already owned it for several years.
   ...
   He was paying respects," Brennan said.
   ...
   That was in the mid-'50s before Brennan owned the place. But, similarly to his experience with Dylan Thomas, he still had the privilege of drinking with Mailer. "I knew Norman Mailer from another place I was working in," Brennan said.
   ...
   Brennan also was friends with the Clancy Brothers trio. But whereas most people might know the famous Irish folksingers because of their music, Brennan first met them from a different angle. Pigeons. When Brennan was 15 he kept pigeons on the roof of 242 W. 10th St., the building adjacent to where Pat Clancy (a recent transplant from Ireland) was living. Although there was a bit of an age difference, the two became friends and when Tom and Liam Clancy later arrived from Ireland, Brennan saw the brothers all the time at the White Horse.
   ...
   Brennan reminisces about the days when John F. Kennedy Jr. used to frequent the bar.

2. 2. www.nydailynews.com

   www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/ - [Cached]

   Published on: 10/30/2007   Last Visited: 10/31/2007

   "He's never a bother," says owner Eddie Brennan.
   
   In fact, the ghost may have provided at least one worker with a few free drinks. A porter hired to carry kegs down to the basement often told Brennan he heard footsteps in the bar and found an empty beer glass and shot glass on Thomas' favorite table, near the radiator in the middle room.
   
   "I would say, 'Tony, you're drinking the beer and you're drinking the shot and you're drinking too many of them,'" says Brennan.

3. 3. New Orleans Restaurant&Dining Guide; BigEasy.com: Your Guide to New Orleans: Hotels, restaurants, vacations, discounts, sightseeing, tours, music, food, reservations

   www.bigeasy.com/new-orleans-re - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/6/2006   Last Visited: 2/3/2008

   Owner Edward Brennan's French Quarter jewel features a 35,000 bottle wine cellar, paired with a sophisticated menu served in the dining room or the romantic courtyard. Brennan's also offers an impressive breakfast menu.