Thirty years ago, Lori Anderson and four of her friends piled into a limo and went bar-hopping for her bachelorette party, beginning and ending the night at The Red Hat in Boston’s Scollay Square.
“I remember we had Long Island Ice Teas,” said Anderson, 58, of the South End. “We just loved the place because it’s a hole in the wall with friendly people.”
Yesterday, she returned to The Red Hat to say farewell after she heard it was closing Sunday after more than a century in business.
“I’ll miss it,” she said. “The people are so nice.”
The owner, Paul Tupa, did not return a phone call and an email seeking comment on Friday. But an employee confirmed that the place was closing Sunday.
“I know; I’m going to cry,” said the sole waitress and bartender, Sarah, who declined to give her last name. “I’ve been here for 15 years.”
At lunchtime, she ran circles around the dive, pouring IPAs at the bar and serving up burgers and nachos to locals, construction workers and tourists sitting at the old, wooden tables framed by exposed-brick walls.
Phillip Shire, a Laborers Local 22 steward, said he’d been coming to The Red Hat for 35 years as he and other union workers built the condos across the street and some of Suffolk University’s buildings.
“We’d come here for lunch and maybe stop by after work for a drink,” said Shire, 63, of Lynn. “I’m sad. It’s a good place to let your hair down.”
The pub’s website says it originally catered to sailors on leave, dockworkers and shipbuilders looking for an inexpensive place to eat. It “soon became a local favorite to businessmen on their lunch hour and ladies doing their shopping for the week.”
“Located in the heart of Scollay Square, an area once best known for its vaudeville theatre and world famous risque entertainment,” the website says, “The Red Hat gained the reputation as a hot spot not to be missed while visiting the city. Because of that popularity, The Red Hat was even able to survive prohibition by maintaining the image of a reputable restaurant by day and a speakeasy by night.”
Miek Rodrigue, 36, of Portland, Maine, said he and his wife, Ali, stop by two or three times a year “to say hello to the crew.”
“When I lived here, from 2004 to 2008, I would stop by two or three times a night,” he said. “My friends and I used to close this place down. When my wife and I started dating, this was one of the first places I brought her to. It really feels like home.”
“Places like this are becoming few and far between,” Rodrigue said. “The powers that be need to take into account that these places matter and should be preserved. There should be more of an effort to save them. Otherwise, places like this will become unrecognizable, and you don’t want that in Boston.”
The Link LonkJune 26, 2021 at 06:46AM
https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/06/25/the-red-hat-a-century-old-staple-in-bostons-scollay-square-to-close-sunday/
The Red Hat, a century-old staple in Boston’s Scollay Square, to close Sunday - Boston Herald
https://news.google.com/search?q=Red&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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