“I heard a pow!” Just a big pow!”
That’s what Gerald Stevens believes to have been an electrical fire sparking in the old reach-in coolers at Nancy Whiskey. Stevens recalls, “It was a crowded Saturday night. The band was going. We all looked at each other: ‘What was that?’”
Hours later, he would receive frantic calls from his tenants and longtime caretaker upstairs notifying him that his beloved bar was setting the early Sunday morning sky ablaze as more than 100 years of Corktown history drifted away in cinders.
Stevens almost didn’t rebuild. He thought about taking the insurance money and walking away, just four years after he’d inherited the bar from Nancy McNiven-Glenn, a longtime family friend whom he affectionately calls his aunt, in 2005. He’d never planned to have the place anyway. “If you ever told me I would have owned a bar, I would have told you, ‘You’re crazy,’” he says.
But Stevens couldn’t give up on the people who worked there, among them his daughter, his niece, and the neighborhood regulars who’d been coming in for as long as he could remember. The fire also happened a year to the day after he buried his father, so Stevens took it as a sign from the old man that it was time to spruce up the old family bar.
The Redford resident is proud of what he rebuilt after the fire and that the reconstruction maintained some of the bar’s old characteristics, like the tin ceiling, redone with new tile to look as it did before, and the refurbished storied phone booth (more on that later), that visitors have enjoyed over the years. He’s also proud to rely on good old-fashioned Irish hospitality. Although he might not be able to offer the once-common free shot of Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey to first-timers, due to rising costs and an unfortunate few who took advantage of the tradition, Stevens is glad that, as he says, “I don’t have to entice people to come in. I’ve never had to spend a dime on advertising.”
Each March, the bar is especially packed with old-timers and newcomers celebrating the Detroit St. Patrick’s Parade, which takes place the Sunday before March 17, and St. Patrick’s Day itself. Nancy Whiskey is advertised by a large wooden sign as “Detroit’s oldest party,” commemorating the fact that it’s been hosting celebrations since 1902, when it switched from a corner store to a saloon.
Plenty of partiers since have hoisted a pint at Nancy. In past years, one even got his own private phone box installed at the end of the bar. Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa — who later famously disappeared — made frequent stops in the years after he was elected to the leadership of the Teamsters Local 299 union in 1937, just a block away. Hoffa had previously used the public phone booth at the bar, but the bar eventually installed a box and phone for Hoffa’s sole use, “I think because he didn’t like too many people listening to what he was doing,” Stevens says.
From a private phone booth fit for a boss to a rowdy party celebrating all things Irish, Nancy Whiskey has seen it all in its century-plus. A pint of the brown and a pour of Tully at this Corktown staple are the perfect accompaniments to the bar’s storied history.
This story originally appeared in the March 2025 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our digital edition will be available on March. 10
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