O'Malley's Pub
Weston, Missouri · Westward Expansion · Est. 1842 · Open today
Since 1842
German immigrant John Georgian founded the Weston Brewing Company in 1842, digging five arched limestone cellars roughly 55-60 feet underground to lager his beer; the brewery grew to about 20,000 barrels a year before Prohibition forced it to close. The O'Malley family opened a restaurant in the main house in the late 1970s and converted the largest underground cellar into an Irish pub in the 1980s. Current owners Michael Coakley and Corey Weinfurt bought the property in 2005, restored it, and revived brewing operations next door. Today the pub pours Weston Brewing beers in the deepest of the historic cellars and is routinely cited on national lists as Missouri's oldest bar on the strength of the 1842 brewery heritage.
The pub sits nearly 60 feet underground in the largest of five limestone lagering cellars hand-dug in the 1840s — patrons descend a spiral staircase into what is essentially a man-made cave.
What to order: Weston Brewing beers on tap in the cellar, including the revived Rip Van Winkle lager, advertised in the late 1800s as the 'richest bottle of beer in the world.'
How solid is the claim?
Missouri’s oldest bar — the evidence
O'Malley's Pub in Weston is our featured pick for the oldest bar in Missouri, with a claimed founding year of 1842. The 'oldest bar' title rests on the 1842 Weston Brewing Company and its hand-dug lagering cellars, not on continuous bar operation: the brewery closed at Prohibition and the cellar space only opened as a bar (by the O'Malley family) in the 1980s. The pub brands itself 'O'Malley's 1842 Pub' and most sources cite 1842 (the Business Insider/Yahoo list's 1862 appears to be an outlier), and J. Huston Tavern (1834) predates the building entirely, so both the date and the continuity are contestable.
Competing Claims
Other Missouri establishments with a stake in the title:
Sources
- 1. O'Malley's Pub in Weston, Missouri — National Trust for Historic Preservation
- 2. O'Malley's 1842 Pub — Weston Irish (official site)
- 3. O'Malley's Pub and Weston Brewing Company — Visit Missouri
- 4. The oldest bar in every state — Yahoo Travel (Business Insider list)
- 5. J. Huston Tavern at Arrow Rock State Historic Site to reopen — Missouri DNR