A Quarter Century on Fifth: Connolly’s is an Uptown Staple
By: Taylor Bowler
On weekdays around 2 p.m., while most of Uptown is still hunched over their keyboards, bartender Kayla Hough is inside Connolly’s on Fifth unstacking barstools, booting up the POS system, and polishing glasses for the night ahead. She’s worked at the Irish pub for the last four years, long enough to know the rhythms of the bar by heart, but her Irish accent still invites daily questions from customers. When they ask where she’s from, she tells them: Limerick.
The Irish pub opens its doors at 3 p.m. to its first few customers. Around 5 p.m., the after-work crowd begins rolling in. On weekends, Connolly’s opens at noon—sometimes earlier, if there’s a Six Nations Rugby match to watch. The bar remains open until 2 a.m. every night of the week; in the early-morning hours, it’s a refuge for service industry workers at the end of their shifts.
This year, the Uptown staple celebrates its 25th anniversary. On May 30th, they’ll close part of the street, bring in live music, and get surrounding businesses in on the festivities. Assistant manager Lukas Faris says they’re hoping it’ll be a neighborhood-wide party.
When co-owners Maynard Goble, Kevin Devin, and Tommy Timmins opened Connolly’s in 2001, the neighborhood’s bar and restaurant scene was just beginning to take shape. The trio, who also co-own Dandelion Market and Tyber Creek Pub, helped shift Uptown’s image from a sleepy banking center that shut down at 5 p.m. to a nightlife destination.
A hundred years ago, the building on Fifth Street was a wood shop and horse stable. Today, it’s candlelit and cluttered with police patches, Celtic keepsakes, and names and doodles scribbled on every inch of the walls. “That wasn't a plan,” Faris says. “Somebody asked for a pen once, and wrote their name on the wallpaper. At first, we were like, ‘No, don't do that,’ but once it gets busy, you don't really notice people doing it. It’s kind of gotten out of hand. Now, we’ll just give ’em a pen if they ask.”
Faris has worked at Connolly’s for 11 years. It’s where he met his wife and where they had their engagement photos taken. “We've actually had a lot of people get engaged here,” he says. A few years ago, the pub hosted a wedding in the event space upstairs with their manager, Amanda, officiating.
While the neighborhood around it has changed, not much about Connolly’s has. They lost their ground-level patio in the mid-2010s when development on Fifth Street picked up, but the interior remains mostly the same. “There's a story behind each picture here, whether it's a Gaelic football team or it's part of Connolly's history,” Faris says. The military and police badges started when Timmins, whose father was in the NYPD, hung his dad’s badge on the wall. Now, Faris says, out-of-owners who visit Connelly’s will mail in their badges to add to the display.
The most popular pour is a pint of Guinness, but the bar has an expansive collection of Irish whiskeys, too. Most bartenders have been there a decade or more and know their regulars by name and drink order. “If we see them through the window, we're already pouring the pint,” Faris says.
Business has boomed in recent years. When 20,000 concert-goers spill out of Spectrum Center and into Uptown, Connolly’s is slammed. When the Hornets are on a roll, so are they.
For anyone with Irish roots, Connolly’s is a landing pad. “There's a big Irish community here, and if you're part of that, this is kind of a place for people to come,” Faris says. “Maybe you’re just moving here or you’re here for school or whatever. It's just a common place to get started. It's welcoming for those people coming here for the first time.”
And when Kayla’s accent hits their ears, they feel right at home.
