Location and History

Brehon Pub is located at 731 N. Wells Street (Superior & Wells St.) in the heart of Chicago's River North neighborhood.

"Ung Roy, Ung Foy, Ung Loy"

The public house known as Brehon is located in River North, at the northeast corner of Wells and Superior and steps from the Chicago Brown Line El stop at Chicago Avenue. There, the Brehon Pub is nestled at the base of a four-story, red-brick building with "Brehon Pub" scripted on the windows in gold.

The Burke Family coat of arms with the family motto, "Ung roy, ung foy, ung loy" (Gaelic for "one king, one faith, one law") is depicted upon a red wooden sign, just above the plate glass door and neon shamrocks that blaze green in the night. A sidewalk café, filled with tables and chairs lies, around the corner on the Superior side of the bar and foot traffic is blocked off when open during warmer times.

Step inside this River North saloon and you'll find a classic narrow Chicago barroom with white-and-green striped linoleum that matches the green-painted tin ceiling as well as the awnings out front, and old-fashioned globe lights hang from above. A long wooden bar with high-backed wooden barstools runs most of the length of the northern wall, the back of which was crafted by the woodworking legend Brunswick and features the Schlitz logo. Long cocktail tables extend from the southern wall and offer additional seating as does the best seat in the house found just inside the front windows overlooking the tree-lined Wells.

Brehonian décor consists of framed photos of famous Irish writers, shillelagh and taped hurling stick, an Irish football (soccer) jersey from the 1994 World Cup, an Irish flag, and a few flatpanel TVs. A portal just beyond the bar leads to the back room at Brehon's, which features a second, smaller metal-topped bar, walls of exposed brick, low-slung wooden tables, hanging Tiffany-style light fixtures, a small pool table, a few televisions, and photos of the sting operation conducted when the joint was the Mirage Tavern.

Mirage Tavern

The building housing the Brehon dates back quite a long ways to shortly after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Since then, the first floor establishment has served as the United Linen Supply in the 1950s and the Firehouse Restaurant in the 1970s, just prior to its being leased in 1977 to the Chicago Sun-Times. Yes, the Sun-Times, who opened the space as the "Mirage Tavern".

Why did one of the city's major newspapers open a bar?

Why, to catch a thief of course! In this case, with the help of the Better Government Association, the target was corrupt city inspectors taking bribes.

Together, Pam Zekman and Zay Smith from the Sun-Times and Bill Recktenwald of BGA hired photographer Jim Frost to document inspectors taking $10-$100 kickbacks at the bar for overlooking health and safety code violations, and those state liquor inspectors involved in a tax skimming scheme. Frost took these photos while hidden at the back of the front room, high up on a platform over the men's can. What is most impressive is that the sting led to 34 convictions, the story was featured by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes, and Zekman and Smith damn near won a Pulitzer Prize for the resulting report that ran for five weeks in early 1978 (the series was originally meant to run for 25 weeks). The investigation was written about in full by Zekman and Smith in their 1979 book The Mirage.

Text from ChiBarProject.com by Sean Parnell